CHAPTER
8
FALL
OF SATAN
The
fall of Satan’s empire will be a three-step process. The first element
of the antichrist’s demise will involve the church rallying together
in the endtime revival when God pours out His Spirit on all mankind,
saving countless millions of souls, as it says in Joel 2:28-32,
And
afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and
daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men
will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour
out my Spirit in those days. I will show wonders in the heavens and on
the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned
to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and
dreadful day of the LORD. And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD
will be saved. NIV
The
second element of his demise, once God raises up His church in front of
pure evil, Satan will martyr many saints. This will precipitate God’s
judgment upon mankind through the trumpets and the bowls.
While
you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck
the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron,
the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at
the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer.
The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that
struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
Dan 2:34-35 NIV
The
verse above is a composite of two important points. First, it gives
reference to the church as the rock that destroyed Satan’s kingdom.
Jesus said in Matt 16:18-19, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and
on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not
overcome it” NIV. The name “Peter” literally means “Rock.”
Jesus was using Peter in this verse as a microcosm of the church,
prophesying that all the power of evil will one day attempt to overpower
it, but will not prevail. Second, this rock is God’s tool of divine
judgment, hewn from a mountainside without human agency as an act of
God. This is a word picture of God throwing His people at the base of
the statue, whose frail eternal form is flesh and blood, but their
internal unity gives them the durability of one giant boulder.
The
third component of the antichrist’s demise will stem from the fact
that he and the false prophet will have conflicting interests that cause
internal power struggles between them. Their lack of character will
prove to be their fatal downfall. Character is the one thing God has
stressed in Himself and in His followers throughout the Scriptures as
His most valuable possession. Satan has proven the value of God’s
character by demonstrating what the total absence of it can do to a
kingdom. God will use Satan to teach His creation the eternal lesson
that good triumphs over evil. Case in point, the false prophet is
motivated by wealth and greed. Although these things also motivate the
antichrist, his greatest failing is pride – to be worshipped. Satan is
utterly dysfunctional and self-deprecating; he has no inner qualities,
and is incapable of cooperating with anyone or deferring reward, like an
undisciplined child. Consequently, he will betray the false prophet,
which is equivalent to self betrayal, and the false prophet will respond
by attacking the city of Satan (Rome), which is equivalent to self
destruction. He will literally destroy his own kingdom with his own
hands, according to Rev 17:16-17.
The
beast and the ten horns you saw [the false prophet] will hate the
prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will
eat her flesh and burn her with fire. For God has put it into their
hearts to accomplish his purpose by agreeing to give the beast their
power to rule, until God's words are fulfilled. NIV
Just
as Satan is amassing the world’s wealth, a tremendous Christian
revival will suddenly erupt in Jerusalem and very quickly race around
the globe. Satan will take measures to stop it by raising up the pope.
The false prophet will fulfill his purpose in glorifying the antichrist
by convincing the world that the pope is Jesus Christ in the flesh,
Israel’s messiah, and rally the whole world around the antichrist’s
global religion with the hidden agenda of structuring his one-world
government and economy around his eminence. The antichrist will then
stage his own assassination and then purport to rise from the dead,
making himself appear that he is indeed the savior of the world,
counterfeiting (mocking) Christ’s resurrection. This will cause the
whole world to follow after the antichrist, and he will use his
celebrity status to betray the false prophet who helped him rise to
power, stealing all his fortunes. This phony resurrection should not
have fooled the people, since the Bible clearly states that Jesus died
once for all (Heb 7:27; Heb 9:12-28; Heb 10:1-10). They will be fooled
by it, though, because Catholics have been desecrating the blood of
Christ for centuries, thinking they are partaking of His actual flesh
and blood every time they take communion. It is only fitting that Satan
should pull this trick against an ignorant and unbelieving world.
The
antichrist will defuse hostilities between Israel and their neighboring
countries, forming a covenant with them whereby the orthodox Jews may
rebuild their old covenant tabernacle of worship. The antichrist will
then migrate to Israel, posing as their messiah by entering the Jewish
temple without permission from the Jewish priests. The orthodox Jews
will kick him out of their temple, and at that point, Satan will enter
the pope in perfect rage and will soon have the false prophet institute
a system of rounding up Christians and unceremoniously destroying them
by implementing the mark of the beast. Had Satan successfully entered
the temple and come out in favor with all the people, his deception
would have been complete, but this single act of the Jewish priests
rejecting the antichrist as their messiah put a serious wrench in the
works of Satan’s plan to convince the world he was Jesus Christ in the
flesh. In the days of Christ the Jewish high priest was a key figure in
having Jesus crucified, but the high priest will this time be a key
figure in foiling Satan’s deception.
The
false prophet will accommodate the antichrist by instituting the mark of
the beast, requiring the whole world to worship him by receiving his
mark or be killed, under the agreement that once the mark solidifies his
one-world religion, and once their global economy is up and running
based on his mark and begins funneling trillions of dollars into the
hands of pure evil, the antichrist will hold up his end of the bargain
by directing the wealth to the false prophet, but the antichrist will
betray him through his inestimable glory by receiving the wealth to
himself and excluding the false prophet. The fact that the false prophet
must trust the antichrist will become the downfall of their kingdom.
Trust is an impossible task for someone who is utterly devoid of
character. The example of God’s trinity, where faith and trust are
intrinsic characteristics of their relationship that holds theme
together, Satan is devoid of these things, and is destined to
self-destruct, starting with the foundation of his kingdom.
In
spite of all these things, God promises to judge His people before He
judges the world, as stated in the following two passages of Scripture:
For
it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it
begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey
the gospel of God? And, if it is with difficulty that the righteous is
saved, what will become of the godless man and the sinner? Therefore,
let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their
souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right. 1 Peter 4:17-19
NASB.
See
to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when
they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we
turn away from him who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice
shook the earth, but now he has promised, "Once more I will shake
not only the earth but also the heavens." The words "once
more" indicate the removing of what can be shaken-that is, created
things-so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are
receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so
worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a
consuming fire." Heb 12:25-29 NIV
The
verses above indicate that the basis of God’s judgment is earthquakes,
promising to shake everything that is shakable, and whatever remains
belongs to God. He intends to judge his people first, not by an
earthquake, but by the object of absolute evil, the enemy of all
righteousness and truth, which will shake the church to its foundations.
God intends to judge the church during the seals, which is the period of
Satan’s wrath, so that during the trumpets the church will be prepared
to enter the wilderness, which will be a 3 ½ year period scheduled as
the most spiritual time in the churches history, which itself is a
preparing process to receive Jesus Christ in the rapture.
According
to the book of Revelation, Satan’s wrath, outlined in the seals, is
the first of three judgments from God, which occurs before the trumpets
and the bowls, suggesting that He intends to judge His people in two
ways: by pruning his church of all unwanted branches that produce no
fruit, and by increasing the fruit production of those branches that
remain. The pruning process will entail the false brethren walking away
from the church on their own volition, according to the parable of the
ten virgins. They will leave in fear of persecution and in fear of
God’s presence, who will be strong among His people in those days. The
false brethren will put a drag on the church and use up precious
resources, while spiritually contributing nothing, so God will pressure
them to make a commitment to a sincere faith or else leave. Once pruned,
His second wave of judgment on the church will be to maximize His
people’s fruit production during the trumpets, since the fruit of the
spirit is the foundation of heaven. This will keep the church
spiritually healthy, and will witness to those around them who are being
saved from this evil and perverse generation, while simultaneously
testifying against those who reject Christ’s offer of eternal life,
who prefer to follow a madman.
The
nature of Satan as an entity has no real substance of his own, because
he is technically not a part of God’s creation. Although God created
Lucifer, he did not create Satan, rather Satan created himself through
sin (hence the mystery of lawlessness), implying that his substance has
been deformed. He does not have a God-given right to exist, yet he does
because man has given him that right, and in the last days he will
become more substantive than the world itself. God originally gave the
heavens and the earth to Lucifer, who was supposed to be God’s steward
over His creation, but as we know he fell into transgression, so God
cursed Lucifer along with his inheritance, which was the entire
universe. Much later Adam came along, and God gave him the earth (which
Lucifer still thinks is his) with the commandment to tend the garden, to
expand its borders until Eden filled the earth, but he too fell into
transgression as we know. The eternal lesson God wants to teach His
creation is that it wasn’t just Lucifer who fell into transgression,
but that anyone who would receive so much power and authority is
destined to abuse it. Only God is humble enough to manage so much power,
because He presides over His own authority.
Satan
never acknowledged Adam’s status as inheritor of the earth, since he
enticed Adam to enter his own curse, reducing Adam to something lower
even than himself, if that were possible. God has since given the entire
universe to man, which was Lucifer’s original inheritance after He
pardoned man from transgression through the blood of His cross and
promoted him to stewardship over all present and future creations. In
other words, Christians will enjoy throughout all eternity Lucifer’s
inheritance that he lost through his own pride and rebellion. It is no
wonder he is immeasurably jealous of Christians, wanting nothing more
than to destroy them all, but the earth cannot survive long without the
fundamental character of God interwoven within the character of mankind.
Once the rapture occurs and every semblance of God is escorted to
heaven, the earth and its inhabitance is destined to crash and burn in
the absence of goodness, righteousness and truth.
There
is good reason to believe the two witnesses are first fruits of the
144,000 Jewish witnesses, even as the 144,000 are the first fruits to
God according to Rev 14:1-5, “Then I looked, and there before me was
the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name
and his Father's name written on their foreheads… They follow the Lamb
wherever he goes. They were purchased from among men and offered as
first fruits to God and the Lamb. No lie was found in their mouths; they
are blameless” NIV. After the Jewish priests physically remove the man
of lawlessness from Jerusalem’s temple, and after the antichrist
orchestrates a system of mass genocide against the saints, God will
transform the ministry of these two witnesses from gentle shepherds of
the Jewish church to dynamic adjudicators aimed at the foundation of
Satan’s kingdom, but their timing will appear as though late, allowing
the antichrist to rack up a high score of martyrs before God begins to
act, revealing yet another divine lesson about God. The fact that the
two witnesses react after many Jew and gentile Christians have been
martyred demonstrates God’s perspective of His saints in light of
eternity. Based on what Jesus said in Lk 21:16-19, He will allow some of
His people to be killed, “You will be betrayed even by parents,
brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death.
All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will
perish. By standing firm you will gain life” NIV. Jesus warned that
some of us will die as martyrs, but not a hair of our heads would
perish, meaning that our enemies have no power over us. They can even
kill us and still we come back to life in the resurrection of the
righteous as martyrs for Christ.
God
views seventy years as less than a drop of time in the proverbial bucket
of eternity, and wants us to think in these terms too. He wants to
reward us for letting Him use our suffering to prove the darkness in the
hearts of men by letting them triumph over us for a short period, so He
can condemn them for all eternity to a stricter judgment. They claim to
love evil, so God will give them an environment most suitable for their
conduct, where the wicked feel most at home. He will send them to the
only place where He does not judge sin. He will send them to hell! God
will drive home the lesson to the rest of His creation for all eternity
that good triumphs over evil, because He has no plans on repeating this
lesson after He creates His new heavens and new earth at the end of
time.
In
a million, billion years from now He doesn’t want His kingdom to start
raising a lot of questions about sin and free will, and having to
explain to His people that they are not His robots. They do have a
choice to serve Him, but choosing not to serve Him is the very
definition of evil, since it inherently involves self-elevation, which
knows no boundaries. He would rather prove to us now that serving Him is
the only right answer, that to worship God does not promote a monster.
God does not need to be worshipped; we are the ones who need to worship
Him, because if we don’t we will invariably worship ourselves, which
always turns us into monsters. He would rather answer all our questions
on an experiential basis now, so we may know firsthand the innate
malevolence of God’s absence, and to never to seek it. The mystery of
lawlessness is not understood in Satan as the essence of evil; he is
merely the carrier of evil. Nor is evil in the creation. Rather, evil is
defined simply as the absence of God. This dissolves the yin-yang
philosophy that requires evil to exist because good exists. On the
contrary, you can’t have both. You either have the presence of God, or
you have the absence of God. One is the essence of purity, righteousness
and truth, and the other is the essence of evil. The reason this must be
true is that God is everywhere, and to seek his absence is impossible to
achieve, unless God allows it, and the only place He allows His absence
is hell, which is where all evil will one day exist.
This
moment has been coming ever since Adam fell into transgression. The war
of Armageddon is the literal manifestation of Adam’s choice that he
made in the Garden of Eden. It is the final and ultimate war against God
Himself, which man has no chance of winning, thus exposing the true
nature of the human heart. Their reprobate minds are darkened from
following the madness of a man who is more human-like than themselves.
To even consider such a futile act of naked aggression against God is
ridiculous, yet they will attempt to overthrow Him, just as Lucifer once
tried eons ago, and is now using the human race to make one more
hopeless attempt to destroy God. If He failed to kill Jesus while
clothed in the frailty of human flesh, but instead unleashed on himself
the law of the spirit of life in Jesus Christ emanating from His cross
that took away the keys of death and hell and set everyone free from the
penalty of death who believe in Jesus for eternal life, then what chance
does Satan have of winning this war of Armageddon? Why does he even
bother? His greed, poverty and rage have turned him into a mad dog. When
the Egyptians followed Moses through the Red Sea, it too was an act of
naked aggression, not so much against the Israelites, but against God
Himself, knowing that it was He who was rolling back the sea to provide
a way of escape for the children of Abraham. To follow them into the Red
Sea with the intent of slaying the ancient Israelites between two giant
walls of water supernaturally held apart for the very people they were
trying to destroy, proved that their hatred of God turned them
completely insane.
These
endtime events will unfold according the sequence outlined below:
1.
A tremendous worldwide revival of the church will transpire in response
to the hardship of an imminent economic depression, followed by the
establishment of a New World Order.
2.
God will raise up His two witness, who will start a Jewish revival by
prophesying to the valley of dry bones (Ezek 37:4-14). Thus they will
establish the 144,000 Jews, who will attain the ministry of directing
the church of the gentiles into a global revival.
3.
In response to the Christian spiritual revival, the antichrist will
begin exterminating Christians in a manner reminiscent of Hitler’s
holocaust
4.
God will interrupt the mayhem with a colossal earthquake that will rock
the planet with the sixth seal (Rev 6:12-17), marking the formal
beginning of God’s judgment (seals one through five pertain to
Satan’s wrath).
5.
The antichrist will introduce the mark to his economic system as a way
of identifying and exterminating Christians, resulting in mass genocide.
6.
The first of God’s trumpets will sound, awaking the ten virgins
7.
The five foolish virgins will walk away from the will of God
8.
God will transform the ministry of the two witnesses from benevolent
shepherds of God’s church to magistrates called to protect the saints,
judging the world for their unbelief. Their ministry will last 3 ½
years. The plagues of the two witnesses and the seven trumpets are
interlaced together, suggesting that God will judge the world as harshly
as the two witnesses defend themselves.
9.
The church will flee into the wilderness for the same 3 ½ year period
10.
After the sixth trumpet, when the ministry of the two witnesses is
complete, they will be killed, then they will come back to life and be
raptured to heaven as the first fruits to God in the first resurrection.
11.
The seventh trumpet will sound, and the dead in Christ will be raised
imperishable.
12.
Shortly after the seventh trumpet the church will be raptured, and the
bowls of God’s judgment will begin.
1
Thess 5:1-3 says, “Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need
to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will
come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, "Peace and
safety," destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on
a pregnant woman, and they will not escape” NIV. A scale of increasing
judgments from God will overwhelm the world as the seals transition to
the trumpets, ending with the bowls of God’s crescendo, keeping with
the analogy of a pregnant woman, whose pain increases until she finally
gives birth to her child, who symbolizes the age of millennium. Mark
13:8 says, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These
are the beginning of birth pains” NIV. Jesus is saying that we can use
natural and manmade disasters as a kind of clock to determine where we
are within the sequence of endtime events as outlined in the books of
Daniel and Revelation, because those events promise to become more
frequent and severe the closer we get to the end. The purpose of the
seals is to discipline the church for her disobedience, while the
purpose of the trumpets is to discipline the world for its unbelief, but
the purpose of the bowls is to destroy, destroy, destroy. The bowls of
God’s judgment are so severe that He will not allow the church to
witness them in the flesh. God will consequently rapture His people
before the bowls, for there will be no place on earth for them to hide.
The
seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple
came a loud voice from the throne, saying, "It is done!" Then
there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a
severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has
been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. The great city split into
three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered
Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury
of his wrath. Every island fled away and the mountains could not be
found. From the sky huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell
upon men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because
the plague was so terrible. Rev 16:17-21 NIV
Listen
to the words of John the Baptist, a man that Jesus personally commended
as one of the greatest prophets of all time (Matt 11:11), “The voice
of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord, make
His paths straight. Every ravine shall be filled up, and every mountain
and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall become straight
(Luke 3:4-6 NIV). The ministry of John the Baptist was to prepare Israel
to receive their messiah, who shook the people to their core by ushering
in a man who shook the nation of Israel so violently that such a people
are still trembling from His visitation two thousand years later. In one
verse John was given the privilege of associating the greatest
earthquake that man would ever experience with the prophesied revival of
the last days, articulating the connection between such a judgment with
the glory that God has prepared for the church by shaking ungodliness
from His saints.
See
to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when
they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we
turn away from him who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice
shook the earth, but now he has promised, "Once more I will shake
not only the earth but also the heavens." The words
"once more" indicate the removing of what can be shaken-that
is, created things-so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore,
since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be
thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our
"God is a consuming fire." Heb 12:25-29 NIV
At
this point Satan is about to lose his grip on the world after losing his
high position above the world. The Bible calls him the prince of the
power of the air in Eph 2:1-2, “And you were dead in your trespasses
and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this
world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit
that is now working in the sons of disobedience” NASB. During the
times of great shaking descriptive of the last days from earthquakes so
severe it makes the stars appear to be quivering in the sky, Satan will
feel these powers in a similar manner when the heavens are shaken by
forces he hasn’t experienced in a long time. Jesus said in Luke
10:18-19, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given
you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the
power of the enemy; nothing will harm you” NIV. God will shake
complacency from the church in the last days and awaken His people from
their millennial slumber and call them to shake the devil from his lofty
place through prayer.
And
there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the
dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong
enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled
down-that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the
whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: "Now have come the
salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of
his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our
God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood
of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their
lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the
devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows
that his time is short." When the dragon saw that he had been
hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the
male child. The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that
she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert [wilderness],
where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out
of the serpent's reach. Rev 12:7-14 NIV
This
is an angelic battle as much as it is a human battle, with the saints in
prayer giving power to the angelic host of heaven to fight for the
church (Dan 10,12-14). Removing Satan from his lofty place as prince of
the power of the air is analogous to removing him from the temple, when
he attempts to enter the Jewish temple and display himself as God. Satan
will possess the man of lawlessness the moment the high priest
extricates him from the temple. This is the only instance in Scripture
that mentions Lucifer’s heavenly eviction. It is ironic that it is
mentioned in context with endtime prophecy, seeming to indicate that
this transition from Lucifer to Satan so many eons ago is analogous to a
future angelic battle that will occur in the last days as a near
identical war that will limit Satan from the spiritual ruler of the
world to possess a mere man. He keeps getting lowered in status from
inheritor of the creation to the prince of fallen angels to finally
borrowing the body of a man.
The
antichrist will come unglued in the public eye at his failure to stop
God’s kingdom from expanding and taking over the world, which is
growing faster and gaining more power than his own kingdom. Satan will
realize he is in over his head when he fails to convince the world he is
the great and power messiah, especially after angelic majesties and the
power of the heavens have blown away the smoke screen of his delusions,
and opened the curtain to reveal a little demon-wizard at the controls,
as in the movie Wizard of Oz. When Toto pulled away the screen to reveal
a simple old man torquing on a lot of levers that cast a scary but
untrue image of himself on the opposite wall to bluff Dorothy and her
friends to fear him, so the church through the power of God will expose
the antichrist and his lying deceptions, who indoctrinated the world to
believe the church is the source of all the ills of society and needs to
be expunged.
Satan
does not want to rule the world through the antichrist because of its
many limitations. He would rather rule the world as the prince of power
of the air (Eph 2:1-3), but the church has taken his place and is now
ruling the world on a spiritual level, symbolic of the wings of the
great eagle that were plucked off the serpent and given to the church so
that she might fly to her place in the wilderness (Rev 12:14). When it
says he fell to the earth, it means he fell from the sky, suggesting
that he was barred from his spiritual vantage point, and was forced to
take on human flesh by possessing the man of lawlessness. God, who is
infinitely more resourceful and intelligent than the devil is working
against him to remove all his options and is demonstrating to the world
just how weak their god really is compared to the almighty. It
shouldn’t surprise anyone that he is weaker than God, except that
Satan believes in his heart that his ways of tyranny are superior to
God’s ways of humility and service. Satan and his loyal subjects will
be overwhelmed by the spiritual power of God’s church, which will
become a real threat to Satan’s world empire. As the church continues
growing in influence and numbers, their relationship with God and their
influence on the world will overwhelm the lies and deception of the
antichrist, exposing Satan, his kingdom, his motives and purpose for
building a one-world religion and government to enslave the people in
his global economy.
God
will give the world the gift of repentance by contrasting the message of
the New World Order with the message of the two witnesses, who will
prophesy for three and a half years that the madman they are following
is Satan in human flesh, and backing up their message with signs,
wonders and miracles that the false prophet will be unable to replicate.
Nevertheless, the majority of humanity will not repent of their worship
of demons (Rev 9:20,21). For this reason God will judge the world for
its unbelief and for blaspheming the Holy Spirit in full knowledge of
the truth, preferring the murderous spirit of Satan and the lust of
their own flesh over the love of the truth. Those who want to kill the
saints will perform their deeds in the very presence of God, because a
spirit of unbelief will have blinded their minds from acknowledging the
ramifications of their own actions. 2 Thess 2:9-12 says, “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
believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” KJV.
In
chapter four, Rise of the Antichrist, the discussion mostly revolved
around Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a statue. Its various metals
represented world empires of the Old Testament age that dovetailed with
Daniel’s dream of four beasts, representing world empires of the New
Testament age, but we came short of commenting about the rock that was
hewn from a mountain face, and hurled at the base of the statue,
completely destroying it. Lets first refresh our memory of
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream:
You
looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue-an enormous,
dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made
of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of
bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked
clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human
hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed
them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were
broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing
floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace.
But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled
the whole earth. In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set
up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to
another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an
end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the
vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands-a rock
that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to
pieces. Dan 2:31-35,44-45 NIV
The
most interesting feature of this statue is the legs, feet and toes that
were partly made of iron and partly made of clay. The clay had the
effect of diluting the strength of the iron, representing two things:
the deterioration of the human gene pool, and the deterioration of
Satan’s foundational economic system, depicted by the ten toes. The
fact that God hewed the rock from a mountainside without human agency
means that it was an act of God. The rock also represents two things:
Jesus Christ and His church. Just as God offered His Son to the world as
a sacrifice for sin, so God will offer His church to the world in the
last days, and they will butcher His saints as they did His Son, so God
will judge them for martyring His people, and for rejecting their
message of eternal life that He spoke through them. For this He will
turn the world upside down and empty them all into hell where they
belong.
This
rock, formed without human agency is composed of many little stones,
suggesting that unity of the church is the divine attribute of God that
depicts the rock being hewn from a mountain face without human agency,
suggesting that unity is both holy to the Lord, and beyond human grasp
without a divine intervention from God. Unity will prove to be God’s
tool of choice to destroy Satan’s kingdom. Satan will consider unity
of the church to be a threat to his kingdom and attack it, and God will
subsequently judge him for martyring the saints. The purpose of the
church in the last days, will be to offer Jesus’ gospel of eternal
life to the world once more by requiring everyone to make a conscious
decision to either follow Christ or to follow the antichrist, equating
their decision to side with the devil with committing the unpardonable
sin. Taking the mark of the beast will therefore represent their full
expression of contempt for the gospel.
Man
has tried (or perhaps he hasn’t tried) to promote unity for thousands
of years, and has utterly failed. So, when unity finally consummates
within the church, people will know for certain that God is working
among His people. Since unity is impossible with God, it will act as the
greatest sign of Jesus’ imminent return, and as Rev 12:1 says, “A
great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the
moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” NASB.
Not even the antichrist is a great sign of the endtimes compared to the
unity of the church. The world has seen many tyrants throughout the
ages, but how many times have we seen the church obeying the Holy
Spirit? That is more rare and precious than gold!
The
brilliance of God’s church that the world hasn’t seen for thousands
of years will light up the sky, blinding Satan’s already blinded eyes,
bringing him down to the earth with confusion and chaos until the
elementary principles of his own nature defeat him as he turns against
his own kingdom. Remember what Jesus said in Matt 12:25,26, “Every
kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or
household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out
Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?”
NIV. It turns out that Jesus was in fact hinting at the very cause of
Satan’s inevitable downfall. He will destroy himself with his own
hands, simply by the fact that he is the son of destruction and is
incapable of turning off the spigot of the most destructive force in the
universe – jealousy. It is capable of eating through anything that
tries to contain it, including himself.
God
will use His church to destroy the kingdom of the antichrist in a
three-stage process. The two witnesses will tear apart Satan’s empire
physically; the 144,000 Jews will preach the gospel, destroying his
empire internally; and many members of the gentile church will be
martyred, precipitating the judgment of God. Martyrdom itself will have
a tremendous impact on people who will know what they are doing is
wrong, either hardening their hearts beyond remedy or else compelling
them to repent and joining the church in the greatest revival the world
will ever know. Many who have not received the mark will see the
martyrdom and hear the word of God, and recognize the two witnesses as
the fulfillment of prophecy. Millions will flood into the church during
this time. The truth will become more powerful and more popular than
Satan’s lies, and it will ruin the kingdom of the antichrist. God will
use His church to expose the devil. Once their testimony is complete,
God will take His people to heaven in the rapture and then the bowls of
His judgment will begin in response to the world’s martyrdom of the
saints. The world will bring upon themselves the bowls of God’s
judgment as a consequence of their hardness of heart in their
unwillingness to repent of their murders, their sorceries, their
immorality and their thefts (Rev 9:21). The bowls are not meant to
correct, but to butcher those who butchered the saints without mercy or
remorse.
God
will salvage Jerusalem in the last days from total annihilation to save
His remnant that He will use to repopulate the earth during the
millennium. There will be some who will come to their senses and repent
and be saved after the rapture. God will call them to Jerusalem before
He unleashes the bowls of His judgment, making Jerusalem the only safe
haven in the world. He will supernaturally protect His remnant right
under the nose of the antichrist, while they wait for His imminent
return to the Mount of Olives. These will be the seeds that will
repopulate the earth while the church is in heaven celebrating the
marriage supper of the lamb. Later, Christ and His church will return to
earth for the promised millennium.
Listen
to the angel speak to His disciples after Jesus rose from the dead,
while they watched Him ascend to heaven in the clouds, "why do you
stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken
from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him
go into heaven" Act 1:11. The angel was saying that the events
leading to His return will occur in reverse order of His ascension. The
disciples gathered in the upper room and waited for the promise of His
Spirit at Pentecost. Afterward, the saints had a powerful ministry for a
while, until they were dispersed into all the nations as they lost their
country to the Romans in 70 AD. That entire process will repeat itself
in reverse order in the last days starting from the apostasy, leading to
the great endtime revival, followed by a post-rapture remnant gathering
in Jerusalem and waiting for Jesus’ return.
After
Jesus returned to the Father
-
Jesus
ascended to heaven
-
His
people gathered in the upper room awaiting the promise of His Spirit
-
The
Holy Spirit sparked the revival of the early church
-
The
church was later dispersed into all the nations
Before
Jesus returns to the earth
-
The
church was fragmented and dispersed
-
The
church united during the great endtime revival
-
After
the rapture the remnant gathered in Jerusalem and relived the upper
room experience, waiting for the promise of His second coming
-
Jesus
returned to the earth to set up His eternal kingdom
The
church will have done irreparable damage to Satan’s empire, but Satan
himself is destined to destroy his own kingdom. His kingdom works on the
opposite principles of God’s kingdom, fostering jealousy and
alienation of its parts, until it collapses under its own weight,
similar to Nebuchadnezzar’s statue with its head of gold being very
top-heavy.
The
ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but
who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast.
They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the
beast…. The beast and the ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute.
They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh
and burn her with fire. For God has put it into their hearts to
accomplish his purpose by agreeing to give the beast their power to
rule, until God's words are fulfilled. The woman you saw is the great
city that rules over the kings of the earth. Rev 17:12,13;16-18
NIV
In
these verses the city that is being destroyed refers to Rome, namely the
Vatican, and the one destroying it is the false prophet, who gave his
power to the antichrist (the pope) in hope that he might establish his
global economy and government around the structure of the antichrist’s
religion, so that they might rule the world together. However, because
the antichrist is Satan incarnate, instead of directing the world toward
the economic and political system of the false prophet, the antichrist
will betray his interests and rally the world around himself as their
religious leader, and receive the glory and power to himself through his
uncontrollable selfishness and greed. The false prophet will deeply
resent him for this and will come and destroy Rome and its empire, but
the antichrist will have already migrated to Jerusalem after faking his
assassination.
The
antichrist will suddenly appear in Jerusalem as Israel’s messiah and
savior of the world, claiming to have risen from the dead, and use his
popularity with the people to protect himself as a fugitive of the false
prophet, who is seeking to destroy him. The armies of the world will
surround Jerusalem to destroy the antichrist and before they attack, the
remnant will run for their lives to the plain of Megiddo, and Christ
will destroy the armies surrounding Jerusalem, forever ending the
empires of men and will set up His own kingdom that will never end,
originating in Jerusalem. The purpose of the millennium is to
demonstrate to the world how to establish a peaceful society and a
kingdom that will last indefinitely.
As
the false prophet continues to assimilate nations and economies, growing
wealthier and enslaving the people, the world will turn to religion for
guidance and comfort. Through these very arduous times a massive
Christian revival will develop giving people hope. This will cause the
antichrist to switch gears, forcing him to abandon his plans of becoming
a world fascist totalitarian dictator to becoming the spiritual leader
of the world. The dragon will orchestrate the circumstances to guide the
pope into the role of religious tyrant for the purpose of enslaving the
people. He will subsequently lose all allegiance to the false prophet,
and will seek his own glory through his new vision of being a world
spiritual leader, but he will keep his vision of living a luxurious and
pampered life by channeling the wealth of the world to the Vatican, thus
betraying the false prophet, turning the moneylenders into puppet
rulers, because he is unwilling to share his glory with even his closest
allies, the inner circle of power.
For
this reason it says in Revelation chapter nineteen that the beast will
hate the whore and will destroy his city with fire, the Vatican of Rome.
He will use the destruction of the city to stage his own death, and then
rise from the dead as it were and migrate to Jerusalem, where he will
pose as Israel’s messiah and savior of the world. There, he will
attempt to put out the fire of revival started by the 144,000 Jewish
Christians who rallied the church together on a global scale. It won’t
take long for Satan’s lies and deception, his lack of character and
self-destructive attributes that he used against the kingdoms of men to
usurp his own kingdom. This will prove once and for all that the ways of
God are not just better; they are the only way to run a kingdom, which
God will demonstrate during the following age of millennium.
It
is not prophesied in Scripture, though it is implied that New York City
will be destroyed, probably by a Middle Eastern nation as the
fulfillment of the goat’s one prominent horn being broken (Dan
8:1-14). This will happen shortly after the United States (the goat)
defeats Russia and China (the ram) during WWIII, after the false prophet
betrays America and uses his trillions to refinance the Ram. After the
destruction of New York City, and after the destruction of its mirror
city, Rome, the nations will attempt to destroy Jerusalem (another
mirror city) to get at the antichrist. The antichrist will have betrayed
the false prophet, so the armies of the world, which are financed by the
false prophet, will seek to level Jerusalem to get at him. God will put
a stop to the nations’ insanity at the war of Armageddon, after which
Jesus Christ will proceed to establish his own kingdom on the earth,
beginning in Jerusalem and fanning in every direction until the whole
earth is filled with His people during the millennium. The endtimes will
exemplify what little difference there is between the love of money and
the hatred of Jesus Christ, who said in the parable of the unrighteous
steward, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the
one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other.
You can’t serve God and mammon” (LK 16:1-13).
James
R. Wuthrich
jimwuthrich@yahoo.com
