August 13, 2013
Ask the average American Christian what the worst sin is and you’ll get any number of answers, but chances are they will fall in the category of the Second Great Commandment, sins against our fellow man: murder, rape, child abuse, genocide, and so on. But to God the greatest sin of all is to violate the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.” We human beings are required above all else to “love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength” (Matt 22:37).
America’s troubles as a nation really began when we dethroned God in the 1947 Supreme Court case of Everson v Board of Education, which elevated secularism above belief in God. Rebellion against the first commandment became the official policy of the United States of America that day. Torcaso v Watkins in 1961 affirmed and hardened that rebellion, the first fruits being the criminalization of prayer in the public schools in 1963. The infrastructure of Christian civilization has been eroding at an ever increasing pace ever since as God‘s blessing has been replaced with His curse (Deuteronomy 28).
What we now call “religious pluralism” and “benevolent neutrality toward religion” — ideas that have come to represent for secularists the highest values of enlightened democracies — are nothing less than the sin of Antichrist, the worst of all possible sins. To assume for oneself the power to arbitrate and equalize the claims of competing deities is, literally, “to exalt oneself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that one sets oneself up in God’s temple [as it were], proclaiming oneself to be God.” This is the very language of the Bible which describes the Antichrist (II Thessalonians 2:3-4). (Our Founders had no such delusion, but set our nation firmly on a Biblical foundation –with reasonable tolerance for other faiths — where it rested securely until Justice Hugo Black, writing for the majority, knocked it off in Everson).
The II Thess 2 passage continues with the following warning: “The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and employ all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing” (v.9-10). The “ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing” will not be introduced at some future time. They are the very forms of deceit that people are already falling for: evolution, communism, “gay theology,” and, yes, “religious pluralism.”
When you stop to think about it, the Antichrist’s “Abomination of Desolation” could be something as seemingly innocuous as a “Proclamation of the Equality of All Religions,” posted like a “cease and desist” order in the place where God was being worshipped until the Antichrist’s intervention (Daniel 11:31-32, Matthew 24:15). Indeed, the Daniel 11 model of the Antichrist, the Greek King Antiochus IV Epiphanies, was motivated by this very goal when he attempted to subjugate the Jewish people in the time of the Maccabees. His efforts to outlaw Judaism was to stop Jews from violating the pluralistic religious ideal he had imposed upon all the countries in his empire.
I don’t presume to know for certain how the end time scenario leading to the Lord’s return will unfold, but it could very well begin soon with an agreement to allow reconstruction of the Hebrew Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. That concession from the Moslems (and secret permission from the U.S. to attack Iran) would likely be considered by the Israelis an acceptable trade for giving up part of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians. And President Obama (on some people’s short list of Antichrist candidates) would be restored on the world stage as the man who accomplished what no other leader could do.
Regional war in the Middle East seems inevitable in the coming months, triggered either by escalation of the Syrian conflict or Israel’s strike on Iran. And once that begins the world economy’s house of cards will almost certainly fall, bringing unprecedented levels of hardship and turmoil across the globe.
I happen to believe the conspiracy theory that a global elite is preparing a new one-world government and economic system to replace the current one. The scenario I have suggested here seems tailor made for them, and for the Antichrist.
It would seem rather natural and a great relief to the world if, after months (perhaps a couple or three years) of great trouble and tribulation in the world, famines, pestilence and social chaos, that a world leader would step forward with a grand solution: perhaps a world-wide Jubilee to declare all debts cancelled, and to introduce a new economic system to give every person on earth a brand new start.
(Incidentally, the next Biblical Jubilee year starts on Yom Kippur, September 23, 2015 at the end of a series of six lunar and solar eclipses precisely on the Biblical feast days, in a display of celestial signs unique in human history See http://www.redmoonrapture.com/).
It would be a simple system, but require universal participation. Everyone would need to get membership identification in a form that could not be used or appropriated by others (perhaps a mark or chip in the hand or forehead). Only members could buy or sell and have access to the emergency supplies and welfare services to which every member is entitled for life. (It is the ultimate socialist regime.)
But there is a condition. You must sign the pledge to reject sectarianism, and embrace religious pluralism and non-discrimination. Americans have been conditioned to accept these values for decades, but there is added incentive to adopt such policies in that the social chaos of the preceding months has been marked by appalling ethnic and sectarian massacres around the world. People are ready to trade their former freedoms for greater security. (Another a way of thinking to which we have been conditioned.) It would explain why average people would be so willing to accept the Mark of the Beast.
In all of this Bible-believing Christians and Jews would have a problem. We could not renounce the Sovereign God by joining up and taking the Mark. There would be serious consequences though, because people who refuse to join would be considered black-marketers and blamed for messing up the program for everyone else. There would arise an increasing hostility toward those who resist, leading to severe persecution.
Meanwhile, back at the Temple, the beloved world leader steps in to end the new (or continuing) war against Israel and impose peace on the region by his overpowering military force. He stops the animal sacrifices in the name of religious pluralism and non-sectarianism (making a great show of self-glorification as the one man capable of solving the seemingly unsolvable problems of the world). And on the altar he places his “Proclamation of Religious Equality” or some other symbol of his power. And (here’s the kicker) no one in the world but the strongest of Christian and Jewish believers would see anything sinister or wrong in his actions. The level of delusion in the minds of average people about who he really is so high that, “if it were possible, even the elect would be deceived” (Matt 24:24).
This is not a prophesy, but only my best guess at how the end days could plausibly unfold given the actual factors at play today. I’m probably wrong on numerous points since this is all purely speculative. But I’m not wrong on the central thesis of this article: America’s rulers have set themselves above God and prepared the way for the Antichrist in the hearts and minds of its people. And to the extent we follow their lead in embracing “religious pluralism” instead of honoring Almighty God, we are equally responsible for the judgment unfolding all around us.
