The Antichrist, Armageddon and The Devil
Unscriptural distortions and misleading ideas about Israel as a nation have necessitated or stimulated weird and fictitious imaginings about what is called Antichrist as well as what many anticipate as Armageddon and the future role of the Devil in the plan of God.
We want you to see all the Scriptures that are
commonly referred to as giving some description of someone who is yet to come
as the greatest of all persecutors of Jews and Christians. In Matthew 24:5;
24:24; Mark 13:6 & 22, as well as Luke 21:8, the Lord Jesus warned of
"false Christs," that He said would come just before, or about the
time of the fall of Jerusalem, which took place in 70 A.D. In Matthew 24:23
& 26 and Mark 13:21, the Lord spoke further of the same deceptive pretenders
and warned the Christians, whom He foresaw in the besieged city, not to be
deceived by them or go after them. These passages have absolutely no reference
to the present time or any future occasion. 1 John 2:18-22 speaks of and
describes some ex-church members who lived in John's time. Note his words,
"Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that
antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know
that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for
if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they
went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. out ye
nave an unction from the Holy One, and ye Know all things. I have not written
unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie
is of the truth. Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He
is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son." (1 John 2:18-22)
There have always been such hypocrites and there still are, and blessed is the
church which has a ministry which forces them to show their colours and leave,
but these were not and are not, "the Antichrist." See also 1 John 4:3
and 2 John 7 for further pictures of Gnostics of John's time, the forerunners
of several cults of our time, like the "Christian Scientists," the
"Jehovah's Witnesses," "Armstrong's World Wide Church of
God" as well as many others.
Other prophecies in Revelation 13, Revelation 17, 18, 19:19-21 and Revelation 20:7-10 give grim previews of two symbolic beasts or evil creatures that have fascinated and perplexed Christians ever since John wrote this book, as God's picture or revelation of the Lord Jesus as He is now and will be at the end of time. These pictures correspond so perfectly to the symbolic creatures given and explained in Daniel 7, and 11 that we are persuaded that the first beast of Revelation 13, the beast of Revelation 17, the city of chapter 18, as well as "The Beast," of chapter 19:19-21 and Revelation 20:10, all describe evil, political leaders and the second beast of chapter 13 and the "False Prophet," of chapters 19 and 20, stand for priestcraft. I am aware that my conviction that priestcraft in general is the lamb with the voice of a dragon seen in Revelation 13:11-18, is a variation from most common opinions; but the more I read of others the more I appreciate this view, as the one that is borne out in all history, since the foul representatives of the degraded, Aaronic priesthood joined with the dastardly despot, who acted for the fourth kingdom of Daniel 2 and the fourth beast of Daniel 7:7, to crucify the Son of God. History has always been Jehovah's clearest and most common means of explaining and confirming prophecy and every page that recorded world events since the time of Christ has shown priestcraft in all false religions to be the exact counterpart of the satanically energized second creature of Revelation 13, the scarlet woman of chapter 17 and the false prophet of Revelation 19 and 20. Whether we look at the blasphemous imposters of Rome, the Patriarchs of the Eastern Church, the deceivers of Buddhism, Hinduism, or Mohammed's followers, the matching features are the same, the connections with political tyranny correspond with the pictures of God's Word, the evil abuse of supernatural power to bolster and further despotic governments all follow the biblical predictions and every system is a clear sample of the Devil's age-old practice of developing phoney duplicates of the Lord's masterpieces. Ever since God had a holy High Priest in Heaven and a spiritual priesthood of believers on Earth, Satan has had his systems of false priests, in all man-made religions, in this world. As godly priests get authority, power, praying privileges and sure guidance from our High Priest, so the usurpers get miracle-working and hypnotizing ability from the Dragon. Too many Christians, who have been nearly right, by identifying the Papacy as Satan's masterpiece, have failed to see that Scripture points to a much larger agency as the real antitype of the symbols of evil shown in the Bible. They tend to look for one future monster or pretender, like the Pope, as the object at which God points and are too often dupes of the Devil's deception, as they fail to see and show the evil in its full magnitude. You only need consider how many wars and criminal blood baths that have opened up rivers of gore, were instigated by the combined campaign efforts of rotten priests and debased despots, to see how accurate this predictive vision is. Name any shameful scourges against helpless, black slaves, to the great World Wars, or Indo China and lesser slaughters, like those in South America and Cuba and you will find deceptive priests and political degraders. Revelation 13, 17 and 18:3 are being fulfilled every day we live.
Only one significant New Testament Scripture remains
to consider. That is 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12, "Now we beseech you,
brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together
unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by
spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at
hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except
there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of
perdition; 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 that He is God. Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you, I told
you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in
His time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now
letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked
be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and
shall destroy with the brightness of His coming: even Him, whose coming is
after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with
all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they
received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this
cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that
they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in
unrighteousness." (2 Thess. 2:1-12)
This monstrosity is not called, "The Antichrist," here, neither is it referred to as, "The False Prophet" or Babylon. In fact it is not clearly identified with any of the other deceptive persons or systems of the New Testament. It bears some resemblance to the combination of hellish characters in the last part of Revelation 13 and the two creatures of chapter 17; but to say for sure that these are three pictures of one foe might be misleading.
Second Thessalonians 2 and
Armageddon both need a bit more treatment. I do not feel called to be overly
dogmatic on either of these, except to say that most of the many explanations I
have read are misfits and inadequate. I have a feeling that there is a
relationship between the symbolic man of Daniel 2 and the man of sin in 2
Thessalonians 2, that both are developments of the dream that sponsored the
efforts that followed God's revelation of Himself at the flood and which led to
the abortive efforts to build the city and tower that were designed to put man
on a level with God. We find the dream giving expression to that mania from
time to time in the Old Testament records, especially in Isaiah 14:4-23, the
vauntings of the spirit of Babylon, (not Satan personally) and uttered so
proudly by Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 3:15 and endorsed by Darius the Mede, in
the decree described in Daniel 6:6-9. We have the same spirit expressed and
denounced in Ezekiel's message to Tyre in Ezekiel 26-28, but especially in
chapter 28:1-19. The unlicensed practice of taking these as pictures of Satan
and 2 Thessalonians 2 as if it applies only to one monstrous man in the future
are all interpretations I think the Devil enjoys. They make for sensational
art, but they blind us to what developed as Satan's counterpart to THE LORD'S
NEW MAN IN CHRIST. Paul's vision of the mystery which was in the mind of God
from eternity past and which is symbolized in the Church is more than a view of
an institution. His teaching in Ephesians 2-4 and in 2 Timothy 3:17 depicts a
new, bigger and better concept of mankind. It is the pattern of manhood which
Paul kept before him as the model to which all believers will be conformed
eventually. It is the man of Romans 8:29, "conformed to the image of God's
Son," the proper Gospel product, which Paul wanted to see in every convert
that he or Christ will present to the Father with exceeding joy. It is what God
sees every one who is in Christ to be according to 2 Corinthians 5:17 & 18.
Please read Paul's Ephesians references here to "The New Man." "But
now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of
Christ. For He is our peace, Who hath made both one, and hath broken down the
middle wall of partition between us. Having abolished in His flesh the enmity,
even the law of commandments contained in ordinances;
for to make in Himself of
Twain one new man, so making peace. " (2 Eph. 2:13-15) " If so be
that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus;
that ye put of f concerning the former conversation the old man, which is
corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your
mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in
righteousness and true holiness. " (Eph. 4:21-24)
"Husbands, love your
wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it; that He
might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He
might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or
any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. " (Eph. 5:25-27) Please look
up also 2 Cor. 11:1 & 2; and Col. 1:19-29. Hence, the apostle who wrote to
the Ephesians and Colossians of the New Man represented by Christ perfectly
(See Col. 1 & 2), and seen prophetically in the membership of Christ's
churches, writes in his letter to the Thessalonians of Satan's New Specimen,
The Man of Sin.
We have written before of the common, deceptive interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:17 & 18, as if Paul were describing there what a new believer is experimentally and immediately upon being converted to Christ. No one but the blindest, sinless-perfectionist, Arminian, would knowingly or deliberately look at a new Christian and say, "Now, you are personally, actually and experimentally, through and through, a new creature. There is not in your make-up the slightest figment, element, shred, particle or shadow of your old nature, disposition or inclination. All that was in you, in any part of your being, in your body, your soul or your spirit, is passed away, all that is dressed in your clothes, all that walks in your shoes or that makes your shadow or speaks with your voice is completely new and all is of God, Who has instantly brought every element of your essence into conformity to His Own perfection and desire." (Read 2 Cor. 5:17 & 18 to see what we mean). No, no, this is what God sees the believer to be and reckons him to be, as He sees him in Christ. The believer who flies to Christ and shelters dependently in Him is identified with Him, is reckoned to be like Him and is seen as one with Him. He is justified. He is not just innocent or reckoned to be sinless. He is not identified with what Adam was when he was made. That was a state of innocence. That is a plain, white paper state, without either virtue or fault. Plain, white paper will not be looked upon at the bank as representing either debt or credit. You may try to settle for innocence if you wish; but you will never find acceptance on that basis. I need and have perfect, positive, eternal righteousness to my account. I am reckoned to be a man like Christ, my Representative, with all His merits to my credit. I am A NEW MAN also, in that I not only have eternal righteousness to my account, but a positively righteous Holy Spirit within my dependent being. In God's sight and according to His record in Heaven's Registry, I am considered to be and am reckoned with as A NEW MAN seen in and identified with Christ.
This is the manhood that Paul says must be faked
before Christ returns. God would not allow the fraudulent copy to be developed
until the genuine was well established and demonstrated, but the Devil's
forgery will come and will impudently pretend to surpass the real jewels in its
claims of glory and worth. Several false copies have been put on the world
market in the past ages, but Humanism, as we now see it, is probably the most
subtle specimen that has come yet. It has very wide acceptance and does more
than any previous counterfeit to gain respectability, and to nullify all
efforts to bring real repentance or true trust. It allows every form of
egotistical lawlessness to occupy God's place and rights in private lives,
church circles and other positions, where God, the Holy Spirit, should rule and
thereby every man builds his own tower of Babel, his own image of gold and his
own throne of antichrist rebelliousness.
Improper Dependence On Evil
One thing I know, and that is
that I am very hesitant about making the kingdom plans of Christ depend upon
such a monster as these pictures portray, to do for the Jews and the world what
Scofield's followers ascribe to their Antichrist. The role ascribed to their
composite author of "Jacob's Trouble," seems to say that only the
fiercest and bloodiest monster ever spawned by men and the worst carnage and
suffering ever seen on earth can accomplish what the Jewish Nation must
experience, if Christ is to succeed as King of kings. Since the Holy Spirit,
the churches, the Gospel of grace and two thousand years of Divine effort have
not fizzed upon them, except to make God's so-called earthly children worse and
worse, the Devil's masterpiece of evil must be called in to help the
long-delayed King to prevail at last over the Jews and lead to a partial
conversion of the world, for that expected and eventful thousand year period.
Our honourable opponent says that Antichrist will so condense and concentrate
all the torturing powers of Hell against the Jews that the stubborn
characteristics of their man in Luke 16:19-31 will be crushed and Hell-like
conditions will do what Christ, the Holy Spirit and the Gospel have failed to
accomplish; but the successful agent himself will be beaten and put away by
Christ, when He shall come, not as a thief, or a shy lover; but as a conquering
Deliverer, and Ruler over a partially converted world. The Devil will not be
destroyed, but will just become the object of secret love and hopes of those
whom even the Lord Jesus or the Jewish evangelists and rulers will not win
during the thousand year period. The much vaunted peace of the millennium will,
for many be a kind of hypnotic spell, which Scofield says Christ will cast upon
them, so that they will destroy all their atomic bombs, their missiles, their
lethal gasses and deadly germs, but they will still pine for Satan's return and
for the re-enforcement of all the wicked dead, who are now in Hades, and will
then use the most potent weapons they have, wooden swords, spears, horses and
old-time farm implements to fight against Christ and His people. This weird and
wonderful spectre of millions of millennium hypocrites, the resurrected wicked,
the fallen angels, led by the liberated Devil (still under the everlasting
chains and darkness, according to Jude 6) is what the Scofieldites think will
vindicate the claims of Christ ship power and will establish His rights
to judge all the wicked, of all ages and places to eternal punishment. If we
did not have Luke 16:19-31 and many revelations in The Apocalypse of doings in
Hades now, we might say that the Bible makes allowance for all this righteous
testing of sinners and vindication of Christ, in what it says, in non-symbolic
language, about what will happen after the general resurrection, the final
struggle and futile resistance of lost men and angels and the record of events
as they will transpire at the General Judgment. When you unscramble the Bible
and re-assemble it, or a few parts of it, into a new pattern, for a
dreamed-of-special time, between this world as it now is and the new, eternal
worlds, where neither devils or hypocrites will ever come; you have an amusing,
little set of past-time pictures; but they lack both the grim reality and the
incorruptible excellence of the Bible's previews of the real future.
Armageddon
Armageddon will come as the final battle of decision,
when Christ comes to take control of all on Earth, all from Hades and all from
Heaven and issues the summons for all to turn in their books at the Judgment.
No other occasion and no other place answers to the prophetic pictures we have
of that event, when the Devil and all his followers will join in one mad surge
against Christ and His people and no experience will ever show evil attitudes
so clearly or Christian trust so simply, as when the details of the symbolism
of Revelation 18, 19 and 20:11-15 find fulfilment. Never has Christ shown His
absolute independence and conquering power and faithfulness so gloriously as He
will then, when He alone will fight, with His spoken Word, for His Own and all
His foes will see such displays as a hundred millennia on Earth could never
demonstrate. Let us be sure we know how to trust Him and how to rely so fully
on His merits and protective powers, that we shall not need or desire any of
the ruined shelters, for which unbelieving rebels will seek and cry in vain,
after all the physical Universe if burned up.
Confessions and Questions
Having said all this, let me offer a few confessions
and questions. First of all, I frankly confess that I have absolutely no idea when
the Lord will come and the world as we know it will instantly end. It may be
before this article gets to the careful typesetter, or it may be that thousands
of years will pass before the shout of resurrection sounds. I know that Matthew
accurately reports for Christ when he says, "This gospel of the Kingdom
must be preached in all the world for a witness, and then shall the end
come." But I do not know the intensity of the preaching that will cover
the long-neglected parts. I know Christ did not refer just to the Roman or
civilized world, as Paul apparently did in Colossians 1:6 and 23. The preaching
is to be more than the Gospel given in Nature, as referred to in Romans 1:18-23
or Psalm 19:1-6. It is to be CHRIST'S GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM, the message which
He commissioned in Matthew 28:18-20, and which Paul proclaimed to his dying
day, according to Acts 28:30 & 31. The present day, world-wide coverage by
radio and television may, match God's plan, but it may not. So we cannot tell
by Matthew 24:14 when the end may come.
Furthermore, I do not know how long the, "little season," of Revelation 20:3 will be. I just know that the Devil was promised such a little period in which to practice the worldwide deception with which he seduced the nations of the world before the Gospel exercised its revolutionary power and turned people in all heathen countries, at different times, away from the idolatry and superstition to which they were enslaved so long. Worship of men and degrading creatures will become the official way of life to some degree, but how much worse it will get than it is now I do not know. Hence, the, "little season," is not an accurate measurement of time that is yet to be. I know humanism and the Devil are still to be around until the Lord, in His personal glory checks and disables both.
Some
Rebuttal Questions
I know that the rules of
debating forbid us to introduce new subject matter or arguments in rebuttal
time, but my questions just relate to aspects that were already discussed. 1.
In Matthew 21:43 the Lord Jesus said to some, "Therefore say I unto you,
The Kingdom shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the
fruit thereof." Who or what was the loser there? and who were the
recipients? 2. Of whom did Peter speak when, in his first epistle, chapter 2:9
& 10, he said, "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an
holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him
who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: Which in time
past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained
mercy, but now have obtained mercy." (1 Pet. 2:9 & 10) Who are the
chosen generation? Who are the royal priesthood? the holy nation? the peculiar
people? Who had not previously received mercy, but now were the recipients of
mercy? 3. Who are described in Galatians 3 as' 'the children of the bond woman
and who are the children of the free woman? Please read all of Romans 4: from
verse 9 to verse 25 and tell me who are Abraham's seed and fellow heirs with
him and Christ of the world? and the covenant promise? (See also Rom. 8:14-17)
One more question, which relates to Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34 and 1
Thessalonians 2:14-16 or Matthew 23:29-33. Have these terrible words anything
to say about unconditional guarantees of eternal safety or unfulfilled rights
to Palestine on the basis of being Abraham's seed? If these curses applied to
Israelites and the covenant held no hope for them, either in Palestine or
Heaven, it surely follows that all national Israel cannot be saved, and if
response to Christ comes only after the Anti-christ's floggings, will that one
generation be saved under the covenant of Moses, the covenant of grace, or on
some other terms? Only truth adjusts and relates properly with truth. Please
take nothing that conflicts with Romans 3:1-26.
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