14 And because of the signs (miracles) which he is allowed to perform in the presence of the [first] beast, he deceives those who inhabit the earth, commanding them to erect a statue (an image) in the likeness of the beast who was wounded by the [small] sword and still lived.
People will see miraculous things that they have never seen, while at the same time they are experiencing horrors as they never have before. They will believe that these miracles are showing us that the anti-christ is of God. They will be looking to man’s abilities to move God, and the anti-christ and false prophet will be telling them just how great they are with God. They will be telling the lost to just look at what God does for them! The anti-christ will have statues of Mary, Peter, Paul, and Jesus. He will tell you to pray to them and bow before them. And the world will believe that this man is as great as any of them, so why not make a statue to him as well? They will fall down before him; they will believe that surely this pleases our Father, they will justify this false belief by looking at the miracles of the false prophet. All along they will be blaspheming our Father, by glorifying man. They will have a form of godliness, but they will be denying the Truth.
These people will see a Pope that speaks so wonderfully. They will want to be part of this popular movement. The lost will marvel at how quickly the Pope, this religious guy, who was always just kind of there, but never had any real world power, came to such great power, and the world will marvel!
After people have seen and experienced the natural disasters that are our Father’s wrath, they will be so desperate for a sign. Anything that looks like it will bring about peace and safety during this time will be heralded. How easy it will be to force the earth to follow what America believes will bring about stability. The two witnesses of God will be showing signs that hurt people, these two will be showing signs that seem to help. The world will hate the two who are truly of our Father and love the two who are not.
Also, this is a great place to talk about the false teaching of a pre-tribulation rapture. There will be a great falling away of false believers during the end times, 2 Thessalonians 2:3. These people who will un to the anti-christ and away from the Truth will be many of those who believed in a pre-tribulation rapture. Actually they will probably still believe in a rapture and they will just believe that it hasn’t happened yet. They will be blinded to the Truth of the anti-christ. They will believe that the last Pope cannot be the anti-christ because Jesus still has them here on the earth. So they will praise God for the miracles of the anti-christ, who will be glorifying man and man’s efforts. They will do this because for most people who believe in a pre-tribulation rapture that is what they do now. They glorify themselves for prophesying in Jesus’ name. They glorify themselves by saying that they do mighty works in Jesus’ name, but the Truth is that Jesus does not know them, Matthew 7:22. Jesus doesn’t know them because these people believe that they do things first, so that our Father can then do something. They confess that we have to accept or that we have to have faith, not that our Father is causing us to have faith, Hebrews 12:2. We act only because Jesus first acts through us, without Jesus we can do nothing, John 15:5.
1 comment:
(Yo Brad. Great blog. Saw this gem on the net. Enjoy. Jane]
PRETRIB RAPTURE SECRETS
How can the “rapture” be “imminent”? Acts 3:21 says that Jesus “must” stay in heaven (He's now there with the Father) “until the times of restitution of all things” which includes, says Scofield, “the restoration of the theocracy under David’s Son” which obviously can’t begin before or during Antichrist’s reign. ("The Rapture Question," by the long time No. 1 pretrib authority John Walvoord, didn't dare to even list, in its scripture index, the too-hot-to-handle Acts 3:21!) Since Jesus can’t even leave heaven before the tribulation ends (Acts 2:34,35 echo this), the rapture therefore can't take place before the end of the trib! (The same Acts verses were also too hot for John Darby - the so-called "father of dispensationalism" - to list in the scripture index in his "Letters"!)
Paul explains the “times and the seasons” (I Thess. 5:1) of the catching up (I Thess. 4:17) as the “day of the Lord” (5:2) which FOLLOWS the posttrib sun/moon darkening (Matt. 24:29; Acts 2:20) WHEN “sudden destruction” (5:3) of the wicked occurs! The "rest" for "all them that believe" is tied to such destruction in II Thess. 1:6-10! (If the wicked are destroyed before or during the trib, who'd be left alive to serve the Antichrist?) Paul also ties the change-into-immortality “rapture” (I Cor. 15:52) to the posttrib end of “death” (15:54). (Will death be ended before or during the trib? Of course not! And vs. 54 is also tied to Isa. 25:8 which is Israel's posttrib resurrection!)
Many are unaware that before 1830 all Christians had always viewed I Thess. 4’s “catching up” as an integral part of the final second coming to earth. In 1830 this "rapture" was stretched forward and turned into a separate coming of Christ. To further strengthen their novel view, which the mass of evangelical scholars rejected throughout the 1800s, pretrib teachers in the early 1900s began to stretch forward the “day of the Lord” (what Darby and Scofield never dared to do) and hook it up with their already-stretched-forward “rapture.” Many leading evangelical scholars still weren’t convinced of pretrib, so pretrib teachers then began teaching that the “falling away” of II Thess. 2:3 is really a pretrib rapture (the same as saying that the “rapture” in 2:3 must happen before the “rapture” ["gathering"] in 2:1 can happen – the height of desperation!).
Other Google articles on the 182-year-old pretrib rapture view include "Pretrib Rapture Politics," "Pretrib Rapture Scholar Wannabes," “Famous Rapture Watchers,” "Pretrib Rapture Diehards," “X-Raying Margaret,” "Edward Irving is Unnerving," “Thomas Ice (Bloopers),” "Walvoord Melts Ice," “Wily Jeffrey,” “The Rapture Index (Mad Theology),” “America’s Pretrib Rapture Traffickers,” “Roots of (Warlike) Christian Zionism,” “Scholars Weigh My Research,” “Pretrib Hypocrisy,” "Appendix F: Thou Shalt Not Steal," "Thieves' Marketing," "Pretrib Rapture Secrecy," “Deceiving and Being Deceived,” "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty," and "Christ's return is NOT imminent!" – all by the author of the bestselling book “The Rapture Plot” (see Armageddon Books).
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