Doctrines of Demons

According to the Bible, one of the prophetic signs of the last days will be strange new doctrines that will be introduced by the Church under the banner of Christianity.

In his two letters to fellow apostle Timothy, the apostle Paul warned the early church that apostasy would enter the end-time church and begin to spread like a deadly cancer.

In his first letter Paul warned: “The (Holy) Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.” (1 Timothy 4:1-2)

In his second letter, Paul issued this caveat: “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” (2Timothy 4:3-4)

Jesus Christ Himself also warned that in the last days, “many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.” (Matthew 24:11) Who are these false prophets? They are popular preachers, teachers and evangelists who promote unbiblical and false teachings under the banner of biblical exegesis.
Are we seeing these prophecies being fulfilled?

Indeed we are. What are some examples? The latest example involves a popular teaching called The Christian Healing Codes that claims the Bible contains specific scriptures that when properly invoked, can heal anything from cancer to ALS to depression, anxiety and even heart disease.

The authors of this alleged new breakthrough are Dr. Alexander Loyd and Dr. Ben Johnson. Johnson makes the bold claim on the thehealingcodes.com website that he was cured of ALS, a catastrophic illness more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, after he began practicing the codes.

ALS is nearly always fatal, and those few who survive the disease spend the remainder of their lives in near total paralysis.

Nevertheless, without any documentation, Johnson claims that the codes healed him of ALS. There are many other testimonies of miraculous healings published on the healing codes website. Unfortunately, like Johnson’s testimony, none are backed by any documentation that verify the testimonies.
Are the Christian Healing Codes a scam?

That’s a strong possibility. But where there’s proverbial smoke, there’s often just enough fire to make the scam seem real. Certainly, Satan has the power to perform supernatural feats that seem to legitimize whatever he’s promoting.

For Satan and his fallen angels, the end always justifies the means, if that means healing desperately sick and terminally ill people in order to promote a scam that will lure people away from biblical truth to embrace heresy and falsehood.

The Christian Healing Codes aren’t Christian at all. Rather, they offer a rehashed version of the false Positive Confession-Word of Faith gospel that is rooted in the Hindu Vedas.

The Healing Codes teach that those who apply the appropriate scriptures by confessing them positively can realize physical and emotional healing and achieve material and financial success. That’s not biblical, but that’s one of the false teachings that Paul and Christ warned would circulate throughout the end-time church.

What are some other examples of demonic teachings that have crept into the end-time church? While there are several examples, one of the more notorious examples involve the eastern religious practices of altered states of consciousness, creative visualization, remote viewing and channeling.

These practices, that have been promoted by such evangelists as Charles and Frances Hunter and Paul Yonggi Cho, involve conjuring images of “spirit guides” or even Jesus Christ in one’s mind and then attempting to communicate with them until they respond.

Not only are these practices unbiblical, they’re witchcraft and occultism. No where does the Bible teach that communicating with God involves conjuring images of Him in one’s mind and then speaking to those images.

Those who practice positive confession and creative visualization will make contact with demonic spirits that masquerade as God, Christ, angels, Mary, saints etc. And these unclean spirits will lead them away from biblical truth to spiritual falsehood and eventually right into eternal damnation.

Among those who promote these practices is the Rev. Pat Robertson who said this: “And you can perform miracles if you but understand the power of God and the laws that unlock God’s power…the basic principles that enable you to experience the flow of God’s energy. In short, God uses the spoken word to translate spiritual energy—sheer power—into the material. We speak to money, and it comes. We speak to storms, and they cease. When you confess blessing and success, those things will come to you.” (Pat Robertson with Bob Slosser, The Secret Kingdom: A Promise of Hope and Freedom in a World of Turmoil)

Still another aberrant teaching that’s entered Christendom in the last days under the banner of genuine biblical teaching is signs and wonders. The Signs and Wonders Movement, that had its beginning with the dubious Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, Ca. in 1906, claims that an explosion of miraculous events will begin to manifest across the world just prior to the return of Jesus Christ.

That teaching is based upon an erroneous interpretation of a scripture recorded by the ancient prophet Joel who revealed that God would make His Holy Spirit available to all nations and peoples in the last days. And that scripture was subsequently fulfilled at Pentecost in the Upper Room in Jerusalem shortly after Christ had returned to heaven. When the Holy Spirit came upon Christ’s disciples in that room, Peter recognized the fulfillment of that scripture and spoke about it. (Acts 2:14-21)

Nevertheless, Joel’s prophecy has become the foundation of the Great Revival Movement that claims that a worldwide Christian revival will commence in the last days culminating with the return of Jesus Christ.
What will highlight this revival? An explosion of supernatural signs, wonders and miracles. However, these signs and wonders will be demonic in nature and lead millions astray, ultimately to the Antichrist when he appears.

From the Azusa Street revival came the Latter Rain Movement and other end-time revival movements such as Signs and Wonders, Kingdom Now and Word of Faith. Not only are these movements obsessed with the supernatural, they’re loaded with false prophets who, as Paul warned 2,000 years ago, tell people what their itching ears want to hear.

One such prophet of the end-time global revival movement is Todd Bentley who claims that he was visited by an angel from God in 2007 that allegedly revealed this interesting news: “The angel spoke about God judging and shaking everything that can be shaken and releasing a fresh fear of the Lord upon God’s people and the earth. The angel then went on to describe a ‘greater glory’ that was coming. The Lord commissioned Todd to begin hosting ‘Greater Glory Gatherings’ for the purpose of stirring up God’s people to simply seek after the face and presence of God for a release of His glory like we have never seen before.” Fresh Fire USA - Writings » Current Prophetic Message

That was seven years ago and we’re still waiting for this revival that Bentley claims the angel told him was coming. Furthermore, according to Bentley, the angel revealed that an explosion of wealth and prosperity would come from this revival: “There came a supernatural release of God’s glory in the form of gemstones and diamonds showing up in the meetings, major financial breakthroughs, debt cancellations, and major in the realm of finance that continued for months leading right now into what has been called ‘The Lakeland Outpouring’ which was marked by notable miracles on a massive scale and aired live on television with thousands in attendance…”

Among the events that allegedly took place during the Lakeland Outpouring was the dubious claim that 30 people were resurrected from the dead. However, no one--including officials from Ignited Church in Lakeland, Fla. where this revival took place--was ever able to provide any documentation to verify that incredible claim. 

Furthermore, the only “major financial breakthrough” that took place after Bentley’s revelation in 2007 was a deep financial recession that followed the collapse of the housing market that year.
That rendered Bentley’s prophecy false.

The Christian healing codes, signs and wonders, end time revivalism and Christian mysticism are just some of the spiritual deceptions that have crept into Christendom in the end times. Sadly, these deceptions were prophesied of long ago. And now, we’re seeing the fulfillment of these prophecies.

Pro Life or Pro Death

Choosing death over life

One of the greatest misnomers in the English language is the compound word "pro-choice."

Pro-choice is the classical term that the executioners of unborn infants coined many years ago to lessen the stigma of their profession. Pro-choice sounds a lot more innocuous than pro-death, and certainly, abortion sounds a lot more sublimate than murder.

But when it comes to life there's no such thing as choice unless a person wants to either commit suicide or wants to legally remove a gravely ill person from a medical machine that's keeping that person alive.

However, when it comes to the life of another person who has no say in the matter--such as an unborn infant--then a person who chooses to terminate the unborn infant's life has chosen to commit murder.

Think of it this way: If you could obtain the legal right to kill your next door neighbor because he's a slob who refuses to cut his grass and pick up the dog feces in his backyard, then that would be your choice to end his life and not his. 

Certainly, your neighbor could plead for mercy and promise to amend his ways, but the decision to allow him to live or die would be up to you. And so, if the decision is up to you, then it becomes a matter of whether or not to grant mercy to your neighbor since his life is in your hands rather than his.

When it comes to ending a human life, the Bible permits capital punishment to be administered to those who have been convicted of committing serious crimes such as murder and rape. But the Bible absolutely forbids the taking of innocent life no matter what the circumstances.

Therefore, in God's eyes, no one has the legal right to abort an unborn infant under any circumstances whatsoever. 

Since the unborn infant can't defend itself, then it's up to the parents to defend the infant by protecting its life. When a parent "chooses" to abort an unborn because the infant poses a major lifestyle disruption, then that parent has chosen to commit murder. Period.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the apostle John revealed that "no murderer has eternal life in him." (1 John 3:15) A murderer is anyone who unlawfully takes another person's life. And that includes life inside the womb as well as outside the womb. 

Thus, all those who are complicit in abortion from those who choose to abort an infant's life to those who perform the procedure are guilty of murder and are worthy of eternal damnation.

Certainly, the increase in global infanticide over the past 40 years coincides with the world's growing rejection of God, His commandments and His transcendent moral laws. 

Millions of people throughout the world--and particularly in the western world, see life as the accidental product of millions of years of random evolutionary forces. They no longer believe that human life is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), but rather they now view it merely as evolution's end product. 

And that's why the abomination of abortion has become so tolerated and accepted in the world today--even by many professing Christians. It is this blissful ignorance of sin and evil that underscores we are living in the terrible times that the apostle Paul warned would come in the last days. (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

The good news for those who have committed murder via abortion is that God will forgive that sin and all their sins if they confess them and accept by faith God's ultimate payment for sin in Jesus Christ's death on Calvary's cross and His resurrection from the dead. That's the good news.

However, the bad news is that if they choose to reject Christ's everlasting atonement for their sins, then they'll be paying for their own sins eternally. And that's in a place called hell.

Hollow Apologies

Artist rendition of a Jew being tortured by his inquisitors

Many historians agree that the Spanish Inquisition was one of the darkest periods in human history.

What was the Spanish Inquisition all about? It was about the forcible conversion of the Jews who were living in Spain during the late 15th century to Roman Catholicism.

The Inquisition, that was launched in conjunction with King Ferdinand, Queen Isabella and the Roman Catholic Church, gave the Jews the ultimatum to either renounce their faith and join the Catholic Church or leave Spain.

But it didn't stop there. Even those Jews who pledged to convert were harshly persecuted if they were even suspected of offering an insincere confession.

Thousands of Jews were forced to flee Spain, leaving their homes and possessions behind. Many left that nation with only the clothes on their backs. Those who didn't escape often met with a horrible end at the hands of church and government officials.

Now however, over 500 years after that horrible episode, Spain wants to make things right again for the Jews. From the Chicago Tribune: "More than half a millennium later, Spain says it is intent on rectifying its historic mistake. Under a government proposal still to be voted on by lawmakers, descendants of Spanish Jews would be offered citizenship and welcomed back to the land that drove out their ancestors. Spanish embassies around the globe have fielded inquiries from Jews who view the proposal as a poignant gesture of contrition and reconciliation and others who see it as an opportunity to receive a European Union passport and the right to settle in any of the EU's 28 nations."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/la-fg-spain-jews-

While Spain's recognition of her sin committed against the Jews is commendable, the other villain in that atrocity has never admitted fault. Nor will she ever admit fault because the Roman Catholic Church considers herself to be infallible and incapable of sin.

Many years ago, when he was asked about his church's historically harsh treatment of the Jews, Pope John Paul II offered what amounted to a quasi-apology that claimed "the church" had committed sins against the Jews, but refused to admit that his church had committed most of those sins.

When we examine the roots of anti-Semitism, we find that many of those roots trace back to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is the mother of anti-Semitism and is responsible for such historical atrocities as the Crusades, the Inquisitions and even Hitler's Holocaust.

Hitler's Holocaust? Yes, even that terrible stain on human history because the Fuhrer qualified his contempt for the Jews by what he learned as a youth in the Catholic Church. Here's an example of that contempt in Mein Kampf: "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." 
http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm

And here's a speech that Hitler gave shortly after he was elected as the Chancellor of Germany in 1933: :"I have been attacked because of my handling of the Jewish question. The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc., because it recognized the Jews for what they were. In the epoch of liberalism the danger was no longer recognized. I am moving back toward the time in which a fifteen-hundred-year-long tradition was implemented. I do not set race over religion, but I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the Church, and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions."
http://www.prophecyreviewonline.org/apps/articles/default.asp?blogid=4770

To this day, the Roman Catholic Church still believes that the Jews are cursed of God because they corporately rejected Jesus Christ as their Messiah 2,000 years ago. And she will always maintain that position toward the Jews.

What has changed is Rome's approach to her historical anti-Semitism. Today, for sociopolitical reasons, it's far more subtle. But it still exists.

And it will continue to exist until Christ returns and puts a permanent end to this counterfeit church.

The Daughter of Darkness

Margaret Sanger and the Ku Klux Klan

"We are failing to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying...the dead weight of human waste...an ever-increasing spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all."-Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood

Behind every mass murderer that has ever existed throughout history lies an ideological proponent that motivated the mass murderer to destroy human life. And behind every ideological proponent of the destruction of human life lies rebellion against God, his commandments and his transcendent moral laws.

Certainly, Adolf Hitler had several proponents that motivated him to commit the mass murder of 10 million human beings; six million of them Jews that Hitler despised with a satanic fury. But one of the most notable and least recognized of Hitler's ideological proponents was a woman named Margaret Sanger who has been beatified by humanists as the patron saint of women's liberation. 

Sanger became the founder of a mass-murdering machine known as Planned Parenthood that has been responsible for millions of abortions in America since the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) legalized abortion in 1973 with its infamous Roe v. Wade decision.

To describe Sanger as an evil person would be an understatement; Sanger not only became a corollary along with Alfred Kinsey of the sexual revolution, but she became a patriarch of human eugenics. Sanger was a staunch Darwinist; she was repulsed at the thought of being held morally accountable for her actions by an omniscient God, so she murdered her conscience and redefined life as merely the accidental result of chemical processes that occurred in a primordial mud pond billions of years ago. 

With God dismissed as a religious myth, Sanger assumed for herself the role of arbiter of human life and decided who was worthy to live on the planet and who wasn't.

And so, with her rejection of God, Sanger reduced human life to highly-evolved protoplasm that had no design, purpose or reason to exist. Children, Sanger argued, were a necessary evil to propagate the human race. Therefore, according to her logic, children that were allowed to be born had to be limited in numbers and had to come from only the finest human stock. 

According to Sanger, that meant that "gutter" or "mutant" races would have to be prevented from procreating until they became extinct. What were some of those "mutant" races that Sanger despised? They were Jews, blacks, Eastern Europeans, Asians and Indians. Sanger proposed sterilizing those "mutant" races until they were eliminated from the earth, and she advocated the creation of a super-class of human beings through the selective breeding of those who were deemed superior intellectually and physically.

That was the ideology that Hitler embraced, and he credited Sanger as his inspiration to exterminate the Jews. But Hitler decided that sterilization would take too long so he decided to speed up the process by destroying the Jews in the death camps that he had his Nazis construct throughout Europe. Like Sanger, Hitler saw human life as merely the end product of random evolutionary forces rather than the image of a Holy, omniscient and all-powerful God. 

And like Sanger, Hitler was the product of a post-Christian world where Christianity was reduced to the tapestry of the prevailing culture. Hence, the ultimate oxymoron becomes a "Christian-atheist" because a true Christian believes in God and believes that Jesus Christ is His Son who entered the world to die for sins of mankind.

However, in the religious sewer of cultural Christianity, Christ is reduced to an ancient Gandhi; merely a man of peace with no power beyond the ability to persuade a few ragtag disciples to forgo their careers in order to follow their charismatic leader. 

The cultural Jesus Christ is the Christ of despots such as Hitler who reinvented the Son of God into a National Socialist or Nazi who blessed the Fuhrer's plans to exterminate those nasty Jews who stood as obstacles in the way of Germany's destiny to populate the world with the intellectually and physically superior Aryan superman. Thus, the Jesus Christ of Adolf Hitler wasn't the Jewish Messiah nor the Son of God; he was the ultimate national socialist who lent credibility to the ageless relativistic creed; the end justifies the means.

For Sanger's minions of devout worshipers, the founder of Planned Parenthood liberated millions of women from the bondage of marital servitude and the chains of motherhood. If life was just the accidental result of billions of years of biological evolution, then human beings had no souls and were reduced to highly-evolved stimulus-response protoplasm. Hence, the unborn baby in the womb was reduced to a "fetus" rather than a developing human being. 

Under Sanger's rules-be-damned philosophy, a fetus was just something akin to trash to be discarded via abortion in the event a pregnancy occurred after some raucous partying. Thus, under Sanger's godless worldview, abortion became the means to end an untimely and unplanned pregnancy so the party could keep on going.

Like Hitler, Sanger was a product of a post-Christian "Christian" culture where Christianity was reduced to Sunday morning liturgical ritualism. Sanger was a Roman Catholic who was born in 1879 and grew up in a large family in Saranac New York. Sanger's Roman Catholic Church claims to vigorously defend life and rightly denounces abortion as infanticide, but there's a distinct difference between the authority of a church and the authority of God. 

When a church condemns abortion as murder sans the bible, it does so under its own authority. But when God condemns the killing of innocent human life as murder (Exodus 20:13) that is punishable by eternal damnation in hell, then his authority carries a lot more weight. Thus, the condemnation of abortion as murder that Sanger heard preached in the Catholic church she attended as a young girl had little influence on the future high priestess of infanticide beyond that of historical church dogma.

But when the relevance of God's word is preached from the bible that contains the prophetic-historic-evidential truth of his word in over 300 specific Old Testament prophecies that Christ fulfilled, then the condemnation is backed by God's absolute authority that no one can violate with impunity. 

Christ, who is the physical incarnation of God the Heavenly Father and hence, equal to Him in authority and power, said this about those who would harm innocent children: "But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Matthew 18:6) And how much worse will it be for those who murder innocent life in the womb in the name of "freedom of choice" or "women's rights"?

In fact, the fate of abortionists who murder innocent life in the womb will be far worse than someone who drowns via a millstone tied around his neck. Unless they repent, they will burn in the fires of hell for eternity because murder in any fashion is the ultimate blasphemy committed against God who is the author and creator of life. Since 1973, America has committed the blasphemy of abortion over 40 million times, and there comes a point when (1) the entire nation shares in the blame and shame of such mass murder and (2) when God finally pronounces judgment against a nation that has shed all that innocent blood. 

What will that judgment be and when will it occur? It has already begun to occur in three distinct phases: (1) the rise in earthquakes, natural disasters and severe weather; (2) the relentless encroachment of militant Islam into nearly all aspects of American culture and society and (3) the rise of wicked political leaders who despise freedom and Judeo-Christian values.

And so, the battle to end the abomination of abortion begins not with the ballot box but inside churches. Until the Gospel is made relevant once again and Christians understand that they all have a responsibility to preach Christ to each and every soul that breathes on earth, then the spiritual darkness will continue to metastasize across the planet like a malignant tumor. 

Abominations such as abortion result from the wicked minds of people who, like Margaret Sanger, have convinced themselves that God is a religious myth. Abortion then, has become the symptom of a far greater problem and that problem is man's abject rebellion against God and his rejection of God's transcendent moral laws. King Solomon wrote: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline." (Proverbs 1:7)

Knowledge begins with the reality that human beings were created in God's image and aren't the final product of billions of years of random biological evolution. Each cell in a human being contains over 300,000 bits of coded, digital information known as DNA that is intricately arranged in a specific order to allow each cell to survive, grow, multiply and defend itself against disease-causing microbes. 

In fact, if the genetic information contained in the DNA of just one cell could be written and recorded, each cell contains enough information to fill a volume of books that could stretch to the moon up to five times.

When he was presented with that evidence, the late scientist Sir Fred Hoyle calculated the odds of Darwinian evolution being the source of life at one in 10 to the power of 40,000. Mathematicians will tell you that anything beyond one in 10 to the power of 80 is mathematically impossible. 

To believe that over 300,000 bits of digitally coded DNA that contain the instructions for the life and survival of each cell arranged themselves without design is preposterous. Even worse, it represents the worst of man's rebellion against God because it ignores and denies the irrefutable scientific evidence that all life was created by an intelligent designer and didn't occur by chance or accident.

Evolution not only can't be proven by science because it has never been observed to occur, but it violates the human conscience. For evolution to be legitimate, then human beings would have to operate instinctively without consciences, much as animals do. And yet human beings build hospitals to treat and care for the sick; they conduct scientific research in search of cures for deadly diseases and they provide social safety nets to feed and care for the poor and homeless. 

Darwinian evolution promotes Natural Selection; that natural forces eliminate the unfit from the human race in nature's quest to produce the perfect race. If man is merely evolution's final product and not designed and created by God in His own image, then man shouldn't have a conscience that condemns him for violating God's transcendent moral laws.

Those laws are written on the hearts of all human beings, a fact that the apostle Paul recognized in his epistle to the early Roman Church. (Romans 2:15) The human conscience, Paul acknowledged, was created by God to bear witness to God's laws written on human hearts. If evolution is legitimate science, then why would some natural and impersonal force create something that would oppose and defy its physical laws? In fact, the human conscience proclaims God's existence which is an irrefutable fact that has driven millions to insanity and suicide throughout history. 

The late atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who inspired Hitler, died a tortured and insane man because he was condemned by his conscience for violating God's laws, even though Nietzsche refused to believe in God. Even Hitler, a warped and evil man, proved he had a conscience when he wept at the sight of tortured and abused animals.

But some, like Sanger, cast their lot with evil to the point of smothering their consciences. Concerning those who would abandon true faith and God in the last days in search of religious myths, Paul wrote: "The (Holy) Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron." (1 Timothy 4:1-2) 

As Paul revealed, despite the witness of conscience, there are those who are so desperately wicked that they will ignore and violate their consciences to perpetuate evil. The hypocritical liars that Paul referenced in his first letter to fellow apostle Timothy are the false teachers that invade Christendom and pervert the Gospel to lead many away from the genuine Jesus Christ to a different Christ who preaches a different gospel. (2 Corinthians 11:4)

Biblical prophecy reveals that in the last days, which we are now in, many hypocritical liars will arise in the world that will not only lead the world astray into myths (Global Warming, Climate Change) but that they will help establish a global government that will murder millions, if not billions in the name of clean environment, peace and safety. 

Sanger's vision of eugenics, selective breeding and population control will become the catalyst for a global government to lower carbon dioxide levels in the earth's atmosphere by reducing the earth's population. Since human beings provide the greatest source of carbon dioxide, the earth's population will have to be reduced, by force if necessary.

Until now, globalists at such entities at the United Nations, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations have attempted to reduce the earth's population through abortion, contraception and the promotion of alternative lifestyles such as homosexuality that eliminate procreation. But many nations and their cultures continue to promote and encourage unbridled procreation and resist all attempts to control population growth. 

The only solution, according to globalists, is to establish a global government that will have the absolute authority to enforce population control. And so, the current unrest in the Middle East in Syria and Iran is designed to remove hostile despots and replace them with more benevolent leaders that will acquiesce to a global agenda of population control, economic stability and equality. If you believe that the fall of Mubarak in Egypt and Gaddafi in Libya was just a coincidence, you'd better think again.

A global government that wields absolute power over all nations holds the absolute power to determine who is allowed to live and who must be removed from the planet. How will such a plan be implemented? The apostle John gave us a glimpse in his famous vision he recorded as part of the Revelation: "He (Antichrist) also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the number of the beast or the number of his name." (Revelation 13:16-17)

John's vision is clear; when a global government appears and assumes absolute power over the earth, the leader of that government who will be the Antichrist will impose a strict set of rules on the citizens of the earth. Those rules will include family size, religious beliefs, health condition, taxes, possessions and income restrictions. One of those rules will mandate the worship of the Antichrist as God. Those who refuse to worship the global leader will be denied the mark which most likely will be a computerized barcode or microchip that will be necessary for survival. 

Those who accept the mark will be condemned to an eternity in hell. John wrote: "If anyone worships the beast (Antichrist) and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured out full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name." (Revelation 14:9-11)

Throughout history, man has ignored and defied God by denying his existence, rejecting his laws and persecuting those created in his image. In his folly and delusion, man has imagined creating his own utopian paradise where peace and equality reign. Tragically, any worldview that rejects the biblical revelation that man is born with a fallen sinful nature will invariably provide the wrong solutions to solving man's historical struggle to achieve peace and harmony on earth. 

In fact, unless the Prince of Peace Jesus Christ lives in the hearts of all men, there will never be true peace on earth. Had Margaret Sanger understood that, she would've seen mankind as God's handiwork instead of the end product on a vast, impersonal evolutionary chain.

A Different Christ and Another Gospel

The coming one-world religion

According to Anglican-Episcopal Bishop Tony Palmer, the Reformation is over and Christianity is now moving into a new era of global peace and unity.

Palmer proclaimed the Reformation's end and Christianity's new era at a conference held at Kenneth Copeland Ministries last month (February) deep in the heart of Texas.

Here's what Palmer said: "The Catholic and Charismatic Renewal is the hope of the Church. When my wife saw that she could be Catholic, and Charismatic, and Evangelical, and Pentecostal, and it was absolutely accepted in the Catholic Church, she said that she would like to reconnect her roots with the Catholic culture. So she did."

http://standupforthetruth.com/2014/02/pope-to-copeland-catholics-and-charismatics-must-

spiritually-unite/

Certainly, if Martin Luther, who was the father of the Protestant Reformation could come back today, he'd be very angry with Bishop Palmer. In fact, if he could, I believe that Luther would probably vomit all over Palmer for making such an abominable statement.

Even worse, Kenneth Copeland, who has long promoted himself as a Protestant-Charismatic minister, agrees with Palmer that a Catholic-Charismatic reunion is necessary in order for Christianity to experience a revival in a world that has turned its back on God and rejected His Son Jesus Christ as the Savior of mankind.

According to Copeland, the separation between the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Christianity is merely based upon a simple "misunderstanding." Here's what Copeland said: "We are kind of…permit me to say, separated. Separated because, it’s sin that has separated us, all our sins. The misunderstandings throughout history. It has been a long road of sins that we all shared in. Who is to blame? We all share the blame. We have all sinned. There is only one blameless, the Lord. I am nostalgic (yearning), that this separation comes to an end and gives us communion. I am nostalgic (yearning), of that embrace that the Holy Scripture speaks of when Joseph’s brothers began to starve from hunger, they went to Egypt, to buy, so that they could eat."

And so, Copeland blames the separation on a simple misunderstanding that's based upon the sin of pride. And he's actively praying for an end to the Reformation and a reunion to occur: "And let us pray to the Lord that He unites us all. Come on, we are brothers. Let’s give each other a spiritual hug and let God complete the work that he has begun. And this is a miracle; the miracle of unity has begun."

Copeland is going to get his wish. There will be a reunion of the Catholic and Protestant churches, just as there will be a reunion of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. And other religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism etc. may join in as well.

And this reunion is going to lead to the greatest counterfeit religious revival in the history of the world. Where is this revival going to lead to? It will lead directly to the Antichrist who millions of folks such as Palmer and Copeland will embrace as the real Jesus Christ when this false messiah appears.

This revival won't be based upon the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Rather, it will be based upon counterfeit signs, wonders and miracles that will be demonically inspired. The apostle Paul warned: "The coming of the lawless (Antichrist) one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing." (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10)

Why are these people going to perish? Because, according to Paul: "they perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness." (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12)

What is the powerful delusion? That the Roman Catholic Church is a genuine Christian church. It isn't and it never was. It worships a different Christ that must be continuously immolated on Catholic altars. 

And it promotes an unbiblical gospel of works instead of the biblical gospel of grace. Paul wrote: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)

How could that be a misunderstanding? The Roman Catholic Church doesn't misunderstand what Ephesians 2:8-9 states--she flat out rejects it. And she pronounces a curse on anyone who believes that salvation in Christ is gained strictly by faith rather than by works.

That's what motivated Luther to leave the Catholic Church and launch the Reformation in the 16th century that led millions out of Rome's darkness and into the light of God's true and only Gospel. The Gospel that says this: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

Shame on Bishop Palmer and Kenneth Copeland. And shame on anyone who would murder the souls of innocent people by leading them to a false gospel that can't save anyone. As Paul wrote: "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!" (Galatians 1:8) 

The Next Holocaust

Jews in the Buchenwald concentration camp

Many people are convinced that another holocaust is coming. With anti-Semitism spreading once again across the world like a deadly malignancy, many folks believe that a second holocaust is inevitable.

And they're partially correct. There is another holocaust coming, but this one's going to involve Christians rather than Jews. 

How can we determine that? Two ways--by the events that are already taking place in the world and biblical prophecy that warns of bad times for Christians in the last days preceding the return of Jesus Christ.

Multitudes of Christians are being slaughtered by Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in such venues as Syria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, the Sudan and Indonesia. Their churches and homes are being destroyed; women are being raped and their children are being murdered or sold as slaves.

In the western world, Christians are increasingly maligned as homophobes, xenophobes and ignorant cretins for rejecting the "settled science" of homosexuality, evolution and Climate Change. 

As many older Jews who survived the original Holocaust can attest, verbal insults and intimidation often precede persecution and violence. They remember how European Jews were maligned as subhuman monsters who were accused of all sorts of crimes from poisoning young children to controlling financial institutions and manipulating currencies.

When Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the verbal persecution was transformed into physical persecution and six million Jews perished in the Fuhrer's death camps. Even worse, much of the world willingly closed its eyes to Hitler's atrocities.

And what happened in Europe leading up to Hitler is now taking place in North America. It's only a matter of time before Christianity will be outlawed as a religion of hate. And those who continue to practice their faith and proselytize Christianity will be threatened with incarceration and even death.

Does that sound extreme? It's coming. Christ Himself warned us 2,000 years ago that His followers would be persecuted in the end times: "Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me." (Matthew 24:9)

The apostle Paul revealed this in his second epistle to fellow apostle Timothy: "In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived." (2 Timothy 3:12-13) Paul not only revealed the inevitably of persecution, but he also revealed that many of the persecutors would masquerade as Christian ministers and pastors.

And the apostle John revealed that when a world government commences under the dreaded Antichrist, Christians will be persecuted worldwide. John wrote: "The beast (Antichrist) was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months. He opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven.  He was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them." (Revelation 13:5-7)

Though Christians have been persecuted since the beginning of the Church age 2,000 years ago, they have never faced the level of persecution throughout the world that they're experiencing today. And it's only going to get worse.

How much worse? It will culminate in a global Christian holocaust.

Goodbye and Good Riddance

Fred Phelps

If the news stories are accurate, then the infamous Rev. Fred Phelps is about to find out whether he was a true Christian or not.

And barring any last minute deathbed confessions, the Rev. Phelps will discover that he wasn't. And he probably never was.

Who is Fred Phelps? He was the pastor of the highly controversial-confrontational Westboro Baptist Church that's located in Topeka, Kansas. Phelps is reportedly dying from an undisclosed ailment and when his clock finally expires, very few people are going to shed any tears after he's gone. 

That's because Phelps is a hater and an arch-racist who masqueraded for nearly 60 years as a Christian minister. Who does Phelps hate? Nearly anybody and everybody who isn't like him and his weird flock. 

Phelps and his group have become famous for crashing the funerals of American soldiers who died while on military duty in such venues as Afghanistan and Iraq. The reverend and his crew draw attention to themselves by waving obnoxious placards that attribute the soldiers deaths to God's judgment on America for her embrace of homosexuality.   

Phelps and his church are an abomination that blasphemes the name of Jesus Christ and tarnishes the good reputation of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) that Westboro doesn't even belong to.

Nevertheless, the Westboro Baptist Church is the proverbial gift that keeps on giving for America's Christophobes who promote Westboro as a typical fundamental Christian church. For America's Christian haters, Westboro is like Christmas 365 days a year. 

Rather, Westboro should be shunned and condemned by all true Christians as a cult that's worthy of nothing but contempt. 

On Westboro's website, (I refuse to print its web address) the hate spews forth like a tsunami of elephant diarrhea. You can find the hate on just about any group and anyone you choose--Jews, Catholic priests, Muslims, Hollywood, Barack Obama, American soldiers and of course, homosexuals. 

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the apostle John wrote this concerning true and phony Christians: "For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.  Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.  Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters,  if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.  Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him." (1 John 3:11-15)

Surely, Rev. Phelps is familiar with that scripture. Maybe he'll remember that and repent before he takes his final breath.

Christianity's Last Days

It was Jesus Christ Himself who warned that the faith in His name that millions of people have followed for 2,000 years would wither and die in the days preceding His return.

Christ stated that "at that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people." (Matthew 24:10-11)

Certainly, millions of people have indeed turned away from Christianity over the past 50 years. In Europe, most churches are practically empty on Sundays except for a few hardy old souls who remain loyal to the end. In America, that's less so although thousands of churches have gone out of business since the 1950s.

Indeed, Christianity seems destined for history's graveyard unless the trend is reversed. However, the question that begs an answer is this one: How and why did the Christian Church end up on life support? And what can be done to reverse this trend?

As mentioned in the previous post, Christianity's decline in the western world began with the church's abdication of the Bible and the Gospel for ecumenism and godless human precepts such as evolution and humanistic psychology that deny God and deify man.

Many young seminary students, aspiring pastors, evangelists and missionaries were indoctrinated with such ideological poison. And they began spreading that poison from the pulpit to their church members who were told that Jesus Christ was no longer to be considered the Son of God, but rather just an ancient Gandhi who promoted social justice, peace, love, tolerance, equality and nonviolence.

Is it any wonder why moral depravity exploded across the western world in the previous century? With the power of the cross emptied by secular humanism and hackneyed religiosity, millions of people indeed turned away from the faith to follow whatever seemed right in their own eyes.

The seeds of moral relativism that were sown by liberal theologians in the 19th century produced the evil fruit of abortion, sexual promiscuity and perversion, drug and alcohol addictions and exploding crime rates in the 20th century.

For example, in 1961, New York City recorded 100 homicides for that calendar year. Thirty years later in 1991, that city recorded 1,000 homicides with approximately the same size population as it had in 1961. And nearly all of America's major cities experienced a similar rise in murder rates during that time period.

Worse yet, America's post-Christian culture has produced a multitude of wicked political leaders who exploit their power to enrich themselves at the expense of the taxpayers and persecute those who oppose them and attempt to expose their sins.

And so, how can this trend be reversed? It won't be reversed by ballot box evangelism, i.e. the idea that conservatives and Christians can simply elect the right candidates with biblical values and everything will be wonderful once again.

That won't happen, not in a culture that's dominated by secularists who control the education, media and entertainment industries in America. They control the message and idea streams that brainwash young people by convincing them that Christians are racists, homophobes, xenophobes and cretins who believe in outdated myths.

It will only happen when the Christian Church heeds the apostle Jude's words to "contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." (Jude 1:3) 

If the faith has been entrusted to the saints, then it's up to the saints to make Christianity relevant once again to a world that has grown exceedingly hostile to their faith.

And that's accomplished at the grassroots level on the street, not at the ballot box or through phony revival crusades featuring high-priced celebrity-evangelists and hotshot motivational speakers. 

Sowing Decadence and Reaping Evil

When did America begin transitioning into a post-Christian nation? Some say after World War II with the advent of the narcissistic Baby Boomer generation.

Others say it began in the 1960s during the counter-culture movement that was fueled by rebellion, hallucinogenic drugs, the sexual revolution and opposition to the war in Vietnam.

But America's true descent into the moral abyss began in the late 19th century. What was so significant about that time period?

That's when many American churches and their seminaries began rejecting the Bible as the literal word of God and instead, began importing humanistic ideas from liberal European seminaries.

Such as? Such as the erroneous belief that all religions are legitimate and lead to God. And some American churches also began embracing such humanistic concepts as psychology and Darwin's godless theory of evolution.

How did this translate into the American culture? By rendering the Bible incomplete as the ultimate source of spiritual truth; obsolete in its worldview and wrong in its assessment of human nature.

Thus, if the Bible was now viewed as only one source of spiritual truth, then spiritual truths could be acquired from other sources.

If the Bible was now considered obsolete in its view of the world, then new worldviews would have to be imported to enlighten the human mind.

And if the Bible was now considered wrong in its assessment of human nature, then the historical concepts of sin, rebellion and man's fall from God's grace would now have to be replaced by such concepts as psychoanalysis, emotional therapy and positive self esteem.

The rotten fruit of Christendom's abdication of the biblical worldview for a godless humanistic worldview began manifesting in the 1920s; a time known as the Roaring 20s when debauchery and hedonism spread across much of America like a deadly brush-fire.

Without biblical moral constraints, many folks plunged into excessive drinking, sex and drugs in their quest to create their own heaven on earth. Even worse, the children born into the post-Christian 1920s later became the parents of the hippies, flower-children, anarchists and potheads of the turbulent 1960s.

And so, America's transition from civility to chaos and moral decadence is directly related to her abandonment of God, the Bible and the Judeo-Christian worldview for a godless, secular worldview. And this is prophetic.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the apostle Paul warned that the last days on earth preceding the return of Jesus Christ would be exceedingly wicked because of the world's rejection of God. Here's what Paul wrote: But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.  People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,  without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,  treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,  having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

I think that many of us will agree that Paul's prophecy is now being fulfilled in the time we are living in.

Darwinism's Seductive Appeal

When we look at the astonishing collapse of civility and morality in the western world, we can trace the roots of the decay of western civilization to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution that was first published in 1859.

What does the theory of evolution have to do with the explosion of moral depravity and violence throughout the western world?

It has to do with this: If there is no God then the Ten Commandments and the Bible are nothing but human constructs that were written by primitive men in the ancient times. In other words, without God, no one is held accountable for their thoughts, actions and words during their lifetime on earth.

Without God, death becomes the ultimate escape from punishment for crimes and transgressions committed during one's lifetime. Without God, even the worst human beings such as Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong fair no worse in death than those deemed righteous such as Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa.

That's why evolution has such a broad appeal to fallen, sinful human beings. Because it offers them the hope of escape from God's judgment and subsequent eternal damnation in hell for their sins that God's infinite justice demands.

From a purely scientific standpoint, Darwin's theory can't be taken seriously. It was the famous scientist Albert Einstein who dismissed evolution as fraudulent because he claimed that Darwin's theory violated both laws of thermodynamics.

Einstein reasoned that in order for evolution to be true, then the universe must have always existed. He explained that since the universe was cooling down, then it had a beginning.

Furthermore, he explained that if the galaxies, stars, solar systems and planets originated from a giant explosion; i.e. the Big Bang, then all organic matter essential for life would've been sterilized (destroyed) from the intense heat making evolution impossible.

And furthermore, if Natural Selection (Survival of the Fittest) is true, then Darwin's theory collapses under the weight of its own argument. In order for a single living cell to function, all the necessary genetic components must be in place or the cell will die. It's scientifically impossible for a cell to have evolved over millions of years. Natural Selection would destroy it before it could ever function.

Approximately 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ explained why fallen human beings are attracted to deceptions and delusions, because they promise cover from accountability to God. Christ said this: "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." (John 3:19-21)

Jesus Christ is the lamp and the light is His Gospel. And His light exists not to condemn sinners, but rather to lead them to the cross where their sins can be washed away by Christ's shed blood.

Tragically, there are millions of folks who would rather dwell in the darkness of delusion than come into the true light of Jesus Christ. And how great is the darkness of Darwin's bogus theory.

Wicked Leaders and Wicked People

Adolf Hitler--"What good fortune for governments that the people do not think."

If stupidity is the first cousin of ignorance, then surely the stupid offspring of ignorance has become Vladimir Lenin's "Useful Idiots" who gratefully lockstep to the drummers of propaganda like mindless puppets that are controlled by their masters from above. It was Lenin who realized early on that if you could keep the unwashed masses fat, dumb and contented, you could steal their souls and control their minds.

That's fat, dumb and contented as in generous government welfare handouts; free health care, food-stamps, school tuition and other assorted goodies doled out to an ever grateful, intellectually bankrupt society that will gladly sell its collective soul for an ever increasing entitlement nirvana. 

As recently as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the western worldview was still based upon faith in God, educational achievement, hard work, sacrifice and perseverance that usually paid dividends in the form of long life, good jobs, successful careers and strong families.

Unfortunately, that was then and this is now. This is now manifests in the form of 40 percent of Detroit's residents who are deemed functionally illiterate, despite the gargantuan amount of coin that both the Federal Government and the state of Michigan pour into Detroit's hellhole of a school system. 

This is now manifests in the form of declining marriage across the United States where, according to the Brookings Institution, only 48 percent of the population lived in matrimony in 2010. In the prehistoric days of 1950, Brookings reported that 78 percent of American households lived in matrimony and 43 percent of those households had children living in them. 

And this is now manifests in the form of the rotten moral fruit that began with the 1960's counterculture movement and sexual revolution that glorified promiscuity, infidelity and perversion as normal behavior and established legalized abortion as the solution to eradicate the consequences of all that unbridled pleasure.

Certainly, Christendom has played no small role in the decline of western civilization. In the mid-nineteenth century, the church ignored Christ for Robespierre, Locke, Spinoza and Bayle, and subsequently emptied the cross of its power. 

It was the apostle Paul who famously wrote: "For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." (1 Corinthians 1:25) And yet Christendom forgot that 150 years ago and decided to cast its lot with human wisdom and human strength. As a result, Charles Darwin's lies were embraced as scientific truth; Christ was reduced to an ancient Gandhi and God was dismissed as the fabrication of primitive, uneducated minds.

Ironically, the United States and much of Western Europe still see themselves as Christian entities, but that's based more on cultural perception than true faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity. Proof is established upon the factual evidence rather than in cultural bromides; the churches in Western Europe are practically empty on most Sundays and in America, they've shed 20 million members since 1958 and have seen over 8,000 fellowships close their doors. 

That's a spiritual recipe for moral suicide and if you have your doubts about that you can ponder this; in 1962 when the U.S. was still largely influenced by Judeo-Christian ethics and values, America's educational system ranked first in the world in scholastic achievement test scores. However, by 2009, according to the Program for International School Assessment (PISA) the U.S. ranked fourteenth in reading, seventeenth in science and twenty-fifth in math. 

And so, a civilization that spurns its past and lives only for the temporal pleasures of the present moment has no future. When a society finds animal life so sacrosanct that it can propose building a shrine for a herd of cows killed in a truck accident and yet callously ignores a stricken man who lays critically ill on the floor of a department store, then the sun has set on western civilization. 

The mega-preachers and big time rock star evangelists with their bulging waste-lines and $6,000 Armani threads can protest that this isn't their fault and to a large extent they're right. But they're not providing the right solutions either when the right solution is the Prince of Peace Jesus Christ who's not being invited to live in many human hearts these days. 

Certainly not when animal life trumps human life that gets trampled underfoot by those who must have the latest Air Jordans adorning their callous feet. 

Those callous feet belong to wicked people who use their callous feet to travel to voting booths to elect wicked leaders after their own wicked hearts. When ancient Israel and Judah turned away from God to wickedness, the Jewish nation got the government and leaders it deserved; wicked kings such as Jehoahaz (810 B.C.) who encouraged the worship of pagan gods in Israel; Amaziah, the King of Judah (790 B.C.) who allowed paganism and idolatry to flourish in Judah throughout his reign and Jeroboam II, the King of Israel (770 B.C.) who also allowed paganism and idolatry to flourish in Israel during his reign. 

The prophet Isaiah, who lived during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, recorded these angry words from the Lord who expressed his wrath at the wicked rulers of both Israel and Judah and their wicked followers who supported them: "Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves; they all love bribes and chase after their gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow's case does not come before them." (Isaiah 1:23)

And then, in a stern rebuke the Lord issued to the leaders of ancient Israel that could easily be applied to the United States and the nations of Western Europe, the Lord told Isaiah this: "You have abandoned your people, the house of Jacob. They (Israel and Judah) are full of superstitions from the East; they practice divination like the Philistines and clasp hands with pagans. Their land is full of horses; there is no end to their chariots. Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made." (Isaiah 2:6-9) 

Consider the parallels between ancient Israel and the modern western world; ancient Israel flourished materially and yet turned away from God to worship pagan idols. The western world flourishes materially and yet ignores God who provided the material blessings. Instead, much of the west either denies that God exists or worships a false Christ who encourages the worship of materialism and allegedly reveals the secrets of acquiring vast wealth.

The moral tragedy that results from a society or civilization that forgets God cannot be overstated. The Germany that produced a Catholic Monk named Martin Luther who exposed the spiritual corruption of the Roman Catholic Church in 1517 when he launched what became known as the Protestant Reformation was the same Germany that produced a despicable atheist named Friedrich Nietzsche who provided the major immoral influence for an infamous mass murderer named Adolf Hitler. 

And certainly, while every society produces both good and bad human beings, both Nietzsche and Hitler were the products of Germany's post-Christian, post-modern culture that had relegated Christ to an ancient historical figure and replaced God with human reason.

And one of the typical characteristics of a post-Christian society is its sordid deference to its religious past as some sort of liturgical antiquity of an outdated era. The Germany of the 1930's that elected Adolf Hitler as its Chancellor was a nation full of churches full of so-called Christians that claimed to worship the Son of God Jesus Christ whose own people were being slaughtered by the millions in death camps that were located just miles from some of those churches. 

And if that pathetic irony seems unique only to the anti-Semitic Europe of the early twentieth century, then consider all these churches in America's big cities that provide absolutely no moral influence on the surrounding real estate. Outside of the Hallelujah Risen Savior storefront church you can find the assorted human tragedies drowning in Jim Beam; flying high on heroin and crack and dying in a hail of bullets from a gangbanger's 9mm Glock.

In the old days, the churches had an excuse for ignoring those drunks, addicts and other assorted losers because they kept their distance from the churches. These days, however, its virtually impossible to tell the difference from what's hanging around outside the churches from what's inside of them. The clergy may arrive in the modern chariots powered by several hundred horses, but the clergy's no different than the rabble inhabiting the asphalt outside if the clergy chooses to airbrush that rabble out of their myopic eyesight. 

Those chariots powered by BMW, Infinity, Lexus, Porsche etc. may allow the high-flying preachers and ministers to escape the moment that provides the unpleasant visual reality that adorns the sidewalks around places like Hallelujah Hall, but they can't airbrush away the human tragedies from human consciences.

Even worse, the dereliction of the biblical gospel inside these churches often produces the moral tragedies that manifest outside of them. For nearly 20 years, Barack Obama sat in the pews of Chicago's Trinity United Church, headed by an arch-racist preacher named Jeremiah Wright who was a Malcolm X in vestments. Wright helped Obama shape his contempt for the United States, 

Conservatives, Israel and Evangelical Christians with his inflammatory rhetoric. And while Obama claimed to disown the fire-breathing preacher during the 2008 presidential campaign after a series of embarrassing videos surfaced that displayed Wright's hate-filled speeches, Obama certainly didn't disown the preacher's philosophy. During a revealing speech that he gave in 2008 to an audience of intellectual elites in San Francisco, Obama maligned conservative Christians as uneducated morons who choose guns and religion over academic achievement.

And yet, just who were the uneducated buffoons in 2008? Those who saw through and exposed Obama's con as the political creature of Chicago's gangster-controlled Democratic Machine and consort of crooks such as Tony Rezko and terrorists such as Bill Ayers? 

Or those 69 million Americans who ignored the evidence that Obama was a con artist and a hardcore Marxist who masqueraded in Christian garb? If wicked people do indeed elect wicked leaders after their own hearts, then the United States circa 2008 indeed got the government and leader it deserved.  

And if America got what it deserved in Obama, then what of all the other nations throughout history that got sordid leaders and brutal dictators? Did Russia deserve Stalin? Did Cuba deserve Castro? Did Germany deserve Hitler? And do the nations of the Middle East such as Syria and Iran deserve the wicked tyrants that crush their people? 

The answer is yes because ultimately, when a nation ignores and rejects the true God of the universe who sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world to die for the sins of mankind, then a nation opens its doors to tyranny and evil. Russia may have had its Orthodox Church, but that church was the historical progeny of the corrupt Roman Catholic Church. 

That means that in the lexicon of the Russian Orthodox Church, Christ was unreachable and unknowable to the common people; who could only be contacted by an illegitimate priesthood through hackneyed rituals and liturgical alchemy. In the lexicon of true biblical Christianity, Christ is easily reachable by faith through prayer and can be approached by anyone rather than by a pompous, self-important and unelected clergy.

Wicked leaders have terrorized peoples and nations since the dawn of history. But their reign of terror can be terminated by the people if they repent of their wickedness and return to God. 

After King Solomon had finished construction of the Jewish Temple dedicated to the God of Israel, the Lord spoke these revealing words to Israel's king: "When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:13-14)

There are those who would ask; what wickedness is the United States and the many nations of the world guilty of? Consider this wickedness; when nations slaughter millions of unborn children in the womb in the name of "freedom and choice", then do those nations not deserve to be judged? Man has been created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26) and when he murders, he has committed the ultimate blasphemy against God himself. Evil is never about freedom and choice; it's about sweeping wickedness underneath a proverbial rug and attempting to rationalize it away to appease guilty consciences. 

In a perverted sense, abortion is indeed about freedom and choice; the freedom God has given man to reject his transcendent moral laws and the choice to break those laws. But rebellion has its consequences in the many types of judgment God pours out on this world that manifests in personal illness, misfortune, hopelessness, failure and depression to corporate forms such as famines, plagues, earthquakes, droughts, severe weather and the rise of evil rulers and despots.

Wickedness isn't limited to abortion; it has manifested in the glorification of sexual perversion, murder, narcotics, street gangs, violence, immorality, rampant divorce, greed, idolatry, witchcraft and godless secularism. The souls and minds of young children are being hijacked and perverted by wicked people who masquerade as "educators" and scientists. 

Young children at the kindergarten level are now being indoctrinated into homosexuality by wicked people who have appeased their consciences by convincing themselves that God is a myth. 

But consider this; if God turns out to be real, then according to Christ, this will be the destiny of those who corrupt the minds and souls of young children: "But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Matthew 18:6) Christ's caveat is ominous; those who corrupt young children and fail to repent will spend eternity burning in the fires of hell. And no amount of denial or self-delusion will conjure that fate away.

Will the world repent and return to God? Tragically, biblical prophecy reveals that the world will continue along the path of evil and will eventually get the ultimate evil leader it deserves in the Antichrist. This leader will reveal himself to the world as Jesus Christ who has returned to save the planet from certain destruction. Unfortunately, this "savior" will be Satan's counterfeit who will possess supernatural powers to deceive the world into embracing him. 

What's truly tragic about his coming appearance is the fact that Christ himself not only warned that the Antichrist would appear, but he even described the events surrounding this impostor's appearance to give Christians a heads up on this massive deception. Christ stated: "At that time if anyone says to you, 'look, here is the Christ!' or, 'There he is!' do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect--if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time." (Matthew 24:23-25)

The appearance of the Antichrist will culminate with a massive spiritual deception that will ironically be encouraged by those who believe themselves to be Christians. The burgeoning end-time global Christian revival movement is not only based upon faulty biblical exegesis, but also upon willful ignorance of the prophetic caveats of Christ, Paul and Peter who warned of a massive fraudulent spiritual movement that would arise in the church in the last days and eventually spread throughout the entire world. Those who willfully ignore God's word in the bible to follow alleged "new revelations" from heaven are setting themselves and the world up for a disaster.

And sadly, the coming disaster will be earned and deserved. A wicked world that has forsaken the true Jesus Christ who came into the world 2,000 years ago to reconcile mankind back to God for an impostor who will dazzle many with demonic power, is a world that will pay the ultimate price with the worst kind of suffering, bloodshed and destruction the world will ever experience in the coming Great Tribulation. 

And that suffering, bloodshed and destruction will be the handiwork of the false, wicked Christ that wicked people have embraced after their own wicked hearts.