Nearly 20 years ago , .....
Don't expect well-known pastors to accurately predict the complex end-time events in the Middle East.
Christians all overlook the parable in Matthew chapter 25 of the ten virgins, which tells us that they were all asleep. All of them. A woman symbolizes a church. The true church is the Bride of Christ.
A virgin is a clean woman so the parable is dealing with all the saved Christians who feel that they are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb. But, to repeat the point that is always overlooked, they are all fast asleep just before the Lord returns.
This parable tells us something that modern churches refuse to face up to. It tells us that all our churches are fast asleep. A person who is asleep does not know what is going on.
Basically, major events overtake the church and catch Christians unaware, in the same way that non-Christians get caught unaware Christians never predicted the Holocaust where Hitler killed 6 million Jews during the second world war.
Nor did they predict that the murderous Russian dictator Joseph Stalin would suddenly back Israel for 18 months which enabled them to become a nation in 1948.
We were caught unawares by the sudden fall of the Communist Berlin wall, which happened by mistake.
The sudden attack on the Twin Towers in New York was an unexpected shock, as was the sudden rise of the Islamic terror group ISIS.
Thus the turbulence of modern politics means that we do not really know what is going to happen next. Being unaware of the situation that is going on is typical of a person who is asleep.
Thus we should not be in a rush to try to predict the future, especially in the volatile Middle East.
These violent and unexpected political events have fooled Christians into looking for the Devil in the political realm. Undoubtedly the Devil does rule politics. He always has. But the real antichrist operates in the church realm, just like Judas did. In their search for the antichrist, Christians mistakenly looked outside the church realm, and first focused on the demonic Nazi dictator Hitler. When he died in 1945 the attention went over to the evil empire of communism. That empire started to collapse in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now the emphasis has moved to Islamic terror that is identified as being the main enemy, the Devil incarnate. There will always be political violence as an obvious outside enemy. It conveniently stops us Christians looking inwards at ourselves, and thus no church believes that they could possibly be wrong.
There are 45000 different kinds of Christian denominational and non-denominational churches. All are different, but each one believes that they are right. That's impossible, so something is obviously very wrong.
So Christians continue to chase political shadows in their search for the Devil. The current fad is the Islamic terror groups.
John Hagee decided to zoom in on Iran, which was building an atomic bomb in 2005 and 2006. In addition, in 2005 they had elected a violently radical president Ahmadinejad who wanted to wipe Israel off the map. So this seemed like a good guess to start World War 3.
But events did not go as he predicted.
So let us see how inaccurate his predictions have been over the last twelve years.
We must compare the predictions made in 2005 and 2006 in his best seller book "Jerusalem Countdown" that sold over 700 000 copies, with the reality of the events that happened during the next 12 years.
In 2005 he had a phone call with a member of "a network of highly informed and strategically placed confidential sources that have a very clear and certain focus on critical geopolitical developments in Israel and the Middle East".
This contact said that Iran was about 12 to 18 months away from making an atom bomb.
This prediction was repeated in his urgently upgraded book in 2006. The time was at hand.
Bible prophecy was thus reduced to possible political speculation. But please remember, "Imagination runs wild when darkness disorients".
And if eyes are closed in sleep then people are in darkness.
Having made a bomb, he guessed that Iran would then proceed to drop it on Israel.
In 2005 Ahmadinejad, a very radical president was in power in Iran and seemed the likely person to do this.
John Haggee then speculated that Israel would do a pre-emptive air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
He asked, "How will Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Libya respond? They unite under Russia and attack Israel".
This was his bold prediction based on his interpretation of prophecy.
"If Israel attacks there will doubtless be a vast pan Arabic Islamic army assembled to attack Israel and attempt to drive the Jews into the Dead Sea".
A dramatic prediction. However it has not turned out that way.
Far from Israel making a pre-emptive air strike, the only thing that we know about is a computer worm called Stuxnet (more information on Wikipedia) that reportedly ruined almost one fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. Nuclear facilities, like any key strategic point, is not connected to the Internet, but runs on its own internal network. A so-called "air gap". The worm was therefore introduced to this network via a contract worker using a thumb drive (USB memory stick).
To date no-one knows who wrote the code for the Stuxnet malware. The media has called the worm extremely sophisticated, and that it could only have been created by a nation-state. Most imply the US, with some help from Israel. But at the Black Hat DC conference in January 2011 it came out that the developers of the Stuxnet attack may not have been the "super-elite cadre" as they’ve been portraited by the media. Stuxnet could have been more effective and difficult to detect had its authors not made a few basic errors.
The problem is that John Hagee, like many others, thought in terms of physical destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities. They never considered that in today's world a cyber-attack might be more effective and crippling, with less cost and loss of human lives. Their view of the world is simply obsolete and outdated.
So this prediction turned out to be hype, not reality: predictions made, not predictions delivered.
Neither of these predictive statements describe in any way what happened in the next 12 years, up to the present 2018. History was operating on a very different song sheet.
In March 2018, Israel admitted that they destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007. Israel released photographs and intelligence documents about their pre-emptive air strike on the Al-Kubar facility near Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria. North Korea was helping with the construction. The reactor was designed to produce plutonium for use in nuclear bombs.
If John Hagee had mentioned the Syrian nuclear facility instead of the Iranian one, his prediction would have been correct. But hardly anyone knew of the Syrian nuclear facility. Even Israel did not know about it for a long time, as the nuclear facility was camouflaged as an agricultural farm.
Israel destroyed Syria's reactor with bombs, not Iran's. There was no backlash from the Arabs. Nobody even seemed to notice that the Syrian reactor had been destroyed. Computer software attacks were used against Iran. Iran cannot prove who did that.
So much for trying to fit today's events into a prophecy.
The timing was wrong. Modern day prophetic scholars from the churches are like weather forecasters. Things easily go wrong because a lot of guesswork is involved. But weather forecasters are using more powerful computers and they have a chance of improving.
Coming back to John Hagee's next prediction.
"If Israel attacks there will doubtless be a vast pan Arabic Islamic army assembled to attack Israel and attempt to drive the Jews into the Dead Sea".
Pan Islamic army? "Pan" means "all " Islam. All the Muslim nations uniting? Impossible under current events at present. Muslim Pakistan supports the peace process with Israel, whereas Iran continues to be the only country in the world that still wants to fight a war for Israel's destruction. Pakistan is the third biggest buyer of arms in the world, much of that coming from America. If they threatened Israel then America would cut off their military supplies. Spare parts, training, upgrading, and maintenance are essential for the upkeep of weaponry. Pakistan needs American weapons and cannot start a war against America’s big friend, Israel.
While Gulf States might publicly condemn an attack against Iran, privately, they would applaud it as a nuclear Iran troubles them.
Iran’s neighbours are scared of Iran invading them, like Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Iran and Kuwait. Iran is Shia and Iraq is Shia. So in the last century, the longest war of eight years was fought between Iran and Iraq, two nations that share the same faith. Religion is not a good bond. Hate and mistrust fuels the Middle East.
Claiming that all the Muslims will combine to attack Israel is not something that is going to happen until there are radical changes made by the final antichrist leader. Who is he? He will come up in the church world. Judas was one of the 12 disciples. These disciples were closer to Jesus than anyone else. The Devil did not go into the Roman politician Pontius Pilate, who was in charge of the Roman army. Satan went into Judas, because spiritual deception is far more dangerous than the political violence of armies.
Luke 22:3 Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve.
The highest position in the church today is the Pope. If ever there is a position that the Devil wants to take over, it would be the final Pope.
If Iran attacked Israel, then the Iranian army would have to march through some Arab state. This state would be scared that the Iranians are very likely to attack that state instead of Israel. For example, in 1204 the fourth "Christian" Crusade to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims got to the Christian city of Constantinople, and then attacked, destroyed large parts, and looted Constantinople. That was easier and far more profitable than carrying on to Jerusalem.
In 1948 Syria would not allow the Iraqi army to march through Syria and attack Israel, just in case the Iraqi army invaded Syria instead. Trust and friendship is not a strong commodity in the Middle East.
It is now 2018, and Iran still does not have the atom bomb.
The claim that was made stated that Iran would have the bomb in 12 to 18 months. It is now 12 years later and no bomb. That prediction was just totally wrong. So much for this highly placed source in Iraq. It was simply a pack of plausible rumours that certain people had.
The fatal mistake was rushing in to publish (and make money with his best-seller book) based on that single opinion, without considering other opinions from people who also had valid information.
The Bible is clear that we need two or three witnesses. Our modern media would also do well to heed that warning.
Basically we humans are biased and we only see what we want to see. This is a well-documented flaw in our human thinking, and is called "confirmation bias". (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias) This bias is the tendency to search for and interpret or favor information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs.
In 2006 Ernst Uhrlau, the head of German intelligence service said Tehran would not be able to produce enough material for a nuclear bomb before 2010 and would only be able to make it into a weapon by about 2015. Making an atom bomb is a dangerous and tricky business.
Why was this information from German intelligence overlooked? Simply because it was not sensational enough. Sensationalism sells books.
Not enough research was done into other reports that were published about Iran’s nuclear program, and many people were fooled by the "Jerusalem Countdown" book into believing something that was never going to happen. Hopefully they have learned a lesson.
What you hear from behind a pulpit is not necessarily the truth.
Who had the more accurate information? Obviously Uhrlau. But as is typical today in the church world, the more accurate information is ignored. Christians simply believe what they want to believe. That is why all Christians are convinced that their church is wide awake. Despite the Bible saying we are all asleep.
Sleeping people (as per Matthew 25) should not make predictions.
Because world events are so complex and turbulent , we humans have very little chance of predicting major world events.
Scientists have never solved the problem of turbulent fluid flow. Fluids are gases and liquids. That is why we seldom predict the weather more than a week in advance. Air currents are far too complex and turbulent as the days go by.
Equally we cannot predict, with any guarantee, the turbulence of modern politics.
Preachers claim that they are reading from the Bible prophecies, but their lack of understanding of what the Bible is saying is made evident by their predictions being wrong. They apply the prophecy at the wrong time, and it obviously does not work.
End time prophecy is a particularly badly understood section of the Bible. Modern Christians are so Bible-illiterate that they hardly know anything on that topic, and thus readily believe anything that they read. Especially if an explanation is packaged in a way they feel is "entertaining", or something they want to hear.
Let us see how differently things turned out in the Middle East after 2006, compared to John Hagee’s prediction.
"How will Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Libya respond when Iran is attacked by Israel? They unite under Russia and attack Israel".
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt hate Iran.
Saudi Arabia (Sunni) and Iran (Shia) are the two powerful nations that are bitterly competing with each other to economically dominate the Middle East. Sunnis and Shias hate each other. Each nation also wants to be the strongest military power. Huge Saudi Arabia has sent its military into her much smaller neighbour Yemen who has a civil war, with inconclusive results. So Saudi is no great military threat to Israel. Saudi, at the moment, is highly unlikely to unite with Iran which is its biggest rival in terms of politics and religion.
Saudi Arabia and Yemen raised two of the seven armies that invaded Israel in 1948 before Israel even had an army. Israel won despite the odds. Everyone had predicted that the fledgling State of Israel would be crushed. They should have been by any human logic, as they were poorly armed and hopelessly outnumbered. But on their side they had the prophecy that God would restore the Jews to their Promised Land. Samson, one man, killed 3000 Philistines at his death. He was blind and placed between two pillars. The Philistines had him beat. So they thought. They actually should have left him alone. Lesson : Do not mess with the Jews. Anything unpredictable can happen. And you will not like the results.
Saudi and Yemen sent armies against Israel in 1948. Yemen is now in a civil war with massive cholera deaths. Saudi has been dragged into this morass and is achieving little.
Iraq sent an army against Israel in 1948. They now find themselves partially occupied by the American military whose help they needed against ISIS. If Iraq sent their army to Israel, suppressed terror groups like ISIS could rise up again. Not to mention Iran attacking Iraq in the absence of the Iraqi army.
Syria sent an army against Israel in 1948. Now they have been devastated by an ongoing civil war since 2011.
If Assad’s Syrian army marches out of Syria to attack Israel, then the Syrian rebels will move in to take over the government controlled regions of Syria. So the Syrian army has to stay in Syria.
What has been overlooked in terms of God's Big Picture is that Israel needed a break from the threats of Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. So God organized a civil war in Syria which took the Syrians out of the picture. Syria desperately asked Hezbollah for help, so that effectively tied down Hezbollah as well in the Syrian civil war. Israel thus got a breathing space and Syria is in no condition to attack Israel. Syria needs a lot of time to rebuild and lick her own wounds. Russia helped Syria bomb and destroy rebel cities. But Russia, with today's low oil prices, is strapped for cash. Thus Russia is not offering billions of dollars to rebuild Syria. So Russia is a bit of a dodgy ally. In contrast, America is helping Iraq to rebuild. Syria is in a tight spot at the moment. Too many of their buildings have been reduced to rubble.
Libya is in a total mess since Gadaffi died in 2011. They were stable under his cruel dictatorship. Libya was probably the richest country in North Africa with free education and medical help. Then they tried democracy, and it was a big failure leading to an intense civil war as different groups tried to claw their way to political power. They now experience economic and political chaos. At present they are not a threat to anyone but themselves in their endlessly chaotic civil war. No one predicted this turn of events. Libya is in a very tight spot. They are not in a position to march across North Africa and attack Israel.
Egypt and Jordan, surprisingly, both have peace treaties with Israel. They represent cool heads in these violent circumstances. Very unexpected.
On the practical side. It takes 7 tons of uranium hexafluoride gas (called hex) to make one atom bomb with about 16 kilograms of enriched uranium-235. This is a very long and difficult process. Hex is vicious stuff to work with as it corrodes almost anything.
One bomb is not enough to destroy Israel. If Iran spends years making one bomb, that is not going to help them much. Israel has at least 80 atomic bombs to retaliate with against Iran and any Arab state that tries to invade. Eighty atomic bombs are a serious deterrent to any country trying to attack Israel.
Then in 2013 Ahmadinejad lost power in Iran and his raving threats against Israel disappeared with him. Iran still hates Israel but their new leader is not so radical.
Saudi Arabia hates Iran and is scared of a nuclear bomb in Iran. So Saudi Arabia has heavily invested in Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Pakistan is in Saudi's debt on this issue. If Iran ever produced a bomb, Saudi Arabia would immediately approach Pakistan to buy a Pakistani bomb.
In addition there is America that has always defended Israel since they became a nation in 1948. Dropping a bomb on Israel will see Iran facing devastating counter measures from America as well as Israel. Dropping an atom bomb on Israel would be suicidal for that nation while America remains a super power.
But things can change. If some major disaster strikes America like the massive San Andreas fault earthquake that is predicted along the coast of California, then the whole situation will change.
We should wait to see what happens rather than making wild guesses and speculations.
According to the Bible, two Jewish prophets are still to rise in Israel who will take the Gospel to the Jews and convert the 144 000 Jews to serve Jesus. We know very little about the details of this great Tribulation time, so it is pointless to speculate on the plagues with which they strike the earth. Many prophecies that the churches mistakenly apply to our day will actually only happen in the Tribulation. The true church will be gone by then. The final antichrist and these two prophets will really change conditions in the world. Then prophecies will fit into place that cannot work now.
In addition, you cannot just fire a missile with an atomic warhead and claim that it will hit its target. Israel has strong anti missile defences. Hiroshima was badly flattened by the atomic bomb in 1945 because the houses were mainly made of wood and thick paper. A building that was still upright after the atomic blast was made from concrete. Israel has more concrete bomb shelters and underground bomb shelters with steel doors than any other country because they have had to protect themselves against 15 000 rockets that have been fired by Hamas and Hezbollah. By law, every home in Israel must have a bomb shelter. Thus many more Jews would survive an atomic blast than what people think. Then the Jews would retaliate against Iran with their atomic bombs. Iran (Persia) would suffer.
Russia is in Syria, but far from leading the Arabs against Israel. Russia is co-operating with Israel so that their aeroplanes do not get in each other’s way. Russian and Jewish pilots respect each other. They are both top class. Russia tells Israel which Syrian rebels they are going to attack and Israel stays out of the way. Equally the Russians leave space for Israeli warplanes to attack the Hezbollah missile sites when they are importing missiles from Iran that move through Syria to get to Lebanon.
Now Turkey has invaded the Afrin area in north Syria to further complicate the picture. Trying to predict where all this will end up is just guessing. No one knows for sure.
So-called prophecies made by pastors today are hopelessly over-simplified, and do not reflect the complexity and unexpected twists of what is going on.
Many scientific theories do not work accurately because they are over-simplified. We cannot comprehend the true complexity of nature.
The DNA in all your cells, if it was joined together and stretched out, would go from earth to far beyond the sun. Yet it is somehow folded up so compactly that it all fits into your small body. Thus we know very little about the DNA. We do not even know how it is folded up. We do not know how skaters can skate on ice. We have never really solved that problem. We do not know how sand flows. We have no idea how the gravitational force works that glues us to the earth. We think we know a lot, but we still have a huge amount to learn about the natural world around us.
And that is how it is with end time prophecy. Churches think they know a lot. But lay out their predictions and see how badly they fit with the real flow of events.
At present the Middle East is in a hopeless tangle that was never predicted by any church pastors.
The next unexpected twist was president Trump making shrewd deals with Saudi Arabia and different Arab states. He knew their big fear was Iran. They need his military support against Iran. The Arab states also need the Israeli Air Force to protect them against the powerful Iranian air force.
This enabled Trump to shock the world by recognizing Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel. This was a completely unexpected move. Far from inciting a horde of Arab nations to attack Israel, this declaration has gone over surprisingly quietly.
Most Christians opposed Trump during the 2016 presidential election in America because he was not a well-behaved guy and had a bad track record. These churches simply do not understand God’s thinking. God was looking for someone with enough courage to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Trump was the man. Obama and Hillary, the nice people, were scared to upset the Arabs as there are 2,1 billion Muslims and only 13 million Jews. They forgot that there was only one Samson, blind and "helpless", to take on 3000 Philistines. Odds of 3000 to one mean nothing to God. God found another brave man in president Trump. Like Samson, he is not intimidated by big numbers of opponents.
God is turning back to the Jews. That is His main concern. The churches have turned away from God's Word, having chosen money and politics rather than staying with the Bible. That is why they understand so little about what God is doing.
Seven churches are mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Each church carried the seed and character of a church age. The last church was the church of the Laodiceans. We are at the end of the church history. We are the last church age before Jesus comes.
"Laodicea" has the meaning of "peoples’s rights". This aspect of "rights" has been a major issue for our last church age. "People’s rights" activists have organized marches, campaigns, protests, and at times violence that have caught the news headlines since the seventh church age started in 1906 with the Pentecostal outpouring in Azusa Street in Los Angeles, America. Worker’s rights, women’s rights, gay rights, immigrant rights, civil rights, minorities rights, LGBT rights, human rights, citizenship rights, cultural rights, rights of undocumented workers, voting rights, education rights, etc.
The last church age is technologically dazzling, but also dark and dangerous.
Revelation 3:14 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write;
Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
Verse 14 refers to the church of the Laodiceans. The door in verse 20 is therefore the door of that church.
Jesus stands outside the door of the church. Christians no longer just believe what the Bible says. They believe church traditions and human opinions. Christians serve God in a way that suits them.
Christians want to celebrate the birth of Jesus. The Bible never asked them to do this. But so what? They will make 25 December (an unscriptural date) into the biggest Christian festival of the year just to impress God. They like it, so they are convinced that God must also like it. The Bible never celebrates good people’s birthdays. Only two murderers, Herod and Pharaoh, had their birthdays celebrated. But churches change this. We will add the "birthday" of Jesus into the Bible, even if we have to use the sun god’s birthday date. We will even drag in the pagan "christmas" tree. Christmas is an unscriptural word. Jeremiah warned us not to use a decorated tree.
Jeremiah 10:2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.
Signs of the heaven are the signs of the zodiac that are used by fortune tellers. "Your stars foretell" is probably the most published literature world-wide on a single topic. They appear in almost every newspaper and magazine. Most differ from one another. Christians must avoid these pathetic attempts at predicting the future.
Jeremiah 10:3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.
:4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
:5 They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not:
An upright, decorated tree. Jeremiah said stay away from this heathen custom. Christians make it the centre of the Christmas festival. So do we stay with the Bible? No. Not when it does not suit us.
You see, we can do what we like because we have people’s rights. We will serve God our way. That is how the modern church thinks. Christians demand churches' rights.
But let us be warned. Do not try to predict events in the Middle East. Our predictions will not happen.
Politics is very volatile and very complex. The only thing we can be sure of is that the predictions of the pastors will be wrong. No massive hordes of Islamic Arabs will gather under modern circumstances at the moment. They simply hate and distrust each other far too much. Just think of the eight year war between Iraq and Iran, that ended more or less exactly where it began after endless bloodshed and a million casualties.
But in the great Tribulation there will be completely different conditions. Then the Russians and the Arabs will unite against Israel.
There are many mysteries in Scripture that Christian pastors do not understand.
Like Eve eating some fruit, when all trees had been declared good on the third Day, and then being punished for this minor disobedient act in a difficult childbirth, as well as having to die. Logical? Of course not. Especially when Jesus said that nothing we eat can defile us.
Genesis 1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
Every fruit tree was good and was given to Adam and his bride.
Matthew 15:11 Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
Nothing they ate could harm them.
So by not understanding original sin and not knowing what the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" was a symbol of, and passing original sin off as a minor act that could not harm them, except as a petty act of disobedience, (not allowed to eat a harmless fruit) Christians give atheists ample ammunition to reject the Bible.
"She ate some fruit, and now children have to die of cancer?" is their justified rejection of this wrong interpretation of original sin.
"A talking snake? What nonsense!" say the skeptics. We must be careful what we say. Our errors switch people off God, and then we will answer one day.
The serpent was the highest beast of the field. He was not a reptile. He could speak and argue. The serpent was the missing link that was between man and ape. The serpent was the top animal. God turned the serpent into a snake after the fall. The serpent was not a snake to begin with. That is why scientists cannot find the bones of the missing link. His bones were totally changed when cursed and turned into a snake. Lucifer was the highest angel and got cursed and turned into the Devil. He was not the Devil to begin with.
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Beasts are mammals, not reptiles. The serpent was the top mammal.
Christians today obviously do not know who the real antichrist is. They keep looking for the bad boys outside the church system. They are completely unaware of the "church capture" that is going on.
Luke 22:3 Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve.
At the first Coming of Jesus, Satan operated by getting into the inner group of twelve disciples. At the second Coming of Jesus, the antichrist is rising up inside the church. The denominational church system is the body that Satan is busy taking over and uniting while these churches keep looking for Satan in outside groups like Islamic terrorists. That belief keeps us asleep because we easily convince ourselves that since Islamic terror is wrong therefore we must be right and thus we are okay.
When the disciples asked Jesus for a sign of the end time, His first warning was about deception.
Matthew 24:4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
:5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
So Jesus warned of anointed preachers in the church at the end time who would deceive many Christians. The word "Christ" means "anointed".
He did not warn about brutal dictators, world wars, and vicious terror groups. These are bad guys, but they are not the real enemy.
Matthew 24:6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
Wars and rumours of wars (like the Cold War between America and Russia) will happen. People will be slaughtered in fighting like the civil wars in the Congo, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Although war is bad, it is not the most dangerous situation. War can only kill your body, not your soul.
Thus do not be too troubled about the wars going on.
Obviously wars are nasty and dangerous. But if a saved Christian is killed, that person goes to Heaven like the first martyr Stephen. So death is not a critical issue in God's Big Picture. Our few years of life on planet earth is not the main focus of God's Will. God wants us to believe His Bible as it is revealed in our day, so that people can be prepared for the second Coming of the Lord.
But error preached from behind a pulpit is far more dangerous, as unbelief in the Bible will separate your soul from God. The serpent behind the pulpit is the real enemy.
Matthew 10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
The real enemy is not political. Islamic terrorists can kill your body. That does no harm to your soul. But the real danger is false doctrine in your church which deceives you into believing something unscriptural. That puts your soul in danger.
When the disciples asked Jesus about the sign of the end time He warned us about being deceived.
Religious deception is always the first step, as shown by the white horse antichrist rider of Revelation Chapter 6 who had a bow but no visible arrow. Where was his arrow? The lies that he tells.
Jeremiah 9:8 Their tongue is as an arrow shot out; it speaketh deceit:
Revelation 6:2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
White is clean, and looks religious. Pope Nicholas I was the first western religious leader to wear a crown, about the year 860 AD. Soon after the year 1300 this had evolved into the famous triple crown which showed that the Pope was the political equal of any king or emperor in Europe.
So the growth of man-made church traditions will continue to spread and conquer the thinking of people.
Christ conquered sin at Calvary. He said "It is finished". You cannot add to what happened on the cross. You cannot add anything to the Bible. Salvation was purchased at Calvary, nowhere else.
On the cross Jesus foresaw everyone who would accept Him as Saviour. When He saw the last one doing so, He announced that salvation was finished.
John 19:30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
Psalm 49:8 (For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever:)
If you were not saved at Calvary, then there is no other place where you can get saved. All you can do today, when you repent, is to accept the pardon that Jesus bought for you at Calvary. Salvation is past tense. People just have to made aware of that fact.
The conquering that happens by the white horse antichrist rider of Revelation Chapter 6 is the spread of the man-made denominational churches that bind people to the doctrines of man. Remember that "denomination" is an unscriptural word.
The next big mistake of the Roman Catholic church was to get involved in politics. The New Testament requires us to pray for our political leaders.
Nero was the cruelest and greediest Roman emperor who killed people after forcing them to sign their wills over to Him. Nero killed Christians with lions and burned them alive. The apostle Paul never opposed Nero. The Gospel has got nothing to do with politics.
When it suited God’s Big Picture (that we never seem to be aware of because we are always in pursuit of self-will) then Nero was removed by God.
In 1095 Pope Urban II incited Europe to form a crusade to attack the Muslims in Jerusalem. The Crusaders robbed, raped, looted, and murdered their way into Jerusalem, and achieved the undying hatred of the Muslims which still haunts the West to this day. So much for church leadership.
Christian church leaders have no right to get involved in politics. That really gave the Devil an opening to get into the church. The Roman Catholic church killed tens of millions of non-Catholics in the Dark Ages and the first hundred years of the Reformation. This was the red horse of political power.
Revelation 6:4 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
Church leaders must stay out of politics. Jesus and the original apostles never got involved in politics.
Our kingdom is not of this world.
John 18:36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.
Christians today, in our self-centred and materialist world, love God in terms of their speech, songs, and their praise. Especially when things go well for them. But their deepest beliefs from their hearts do not stay with Scripture, but rather stay with the traditions and opinions of their church system and church leaders.
Matthew 15:8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
:9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
"Christmas" is an unscriptural word, so guess how much it means to the God of the Bible? Nothing.
The word "pastor" is only mentioned once in the New Testament. Today there are 45 000 different denominational and non-denominational church systems. Almost all have a pastor in charge. Yet nowhere in the New Testament is the pastor placed in charge of the church. That is a man-made tradition.
Thus a holy man is elevated above the people, despite the word "pastor" being condemned six times in the Old Testament. For example :
Jeremiah 23:1 Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.
:2 Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD.
This is a ministry that has splintered the church into numerous fragments.
But we are fast asleep. The church system suits us. We dream on, while we ignore the religious antichrist system rising in our churches to make us believe unscriptural things. But we refuse to see this danger as we are endlessly distracted by the current political events, our love of money and material gain, and the violent enemies of mankind that we think are the antichrist.
We are fast asleep according to the Bible, and yet we are regularly in church, as most Christians are.
Then it is the preachers who are lulling us to sleep.
They can publish predictions that do not come to pass, and no-one objects. There is no accountability anymore.
They still get well paid.
