by Edward Chamberlain
Philologos Religious Online Books
Philologos.org
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by Edward Chamberlain Philologos Religious Online Books |
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How Shall We Tell The Children?
THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS: THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST Matthew 24:4-5 In the 24th chapter of Matthew Jesus spoke of several types of events which can and will occur in every generation. False messiahs and false prophets can be, and have been found in many generations since the ascension, but it has only been in the last few years, since the advent of the New Age movement, that prophets claiming to be Christ have been seen outside of the context of Judaism or Christianity. Prophets claiming to be Christ do not need to be restricted to the pantheism of the New Age however, as can be seen by various cult leaders among whom the late David Koresh is typical. The "types" of men and even women claiming to be Christ are now coming from all manner of religious and philosophical backgrounds. Jesus said that many would come in his name and teach that they are Christ. So far as I have been able to find out, there has not yet been one such person who was also supernaturally empowered. Jesus told us to beware of the one who will come teaching that he was Christ and who will work supernatural works to substantiate his claim. Now this particular prophecy also seems to be of concern to the Jews, because in John 5:43 Jesus told them, "I am come in my Father's name and you received me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." This passage predicts that at some point a false prophet will come forward in the character and authority of the Jewish messiah, but will come in his own name, and will deceive many, including many Jews and unstable souls from within the forms of Christianity. Many will come in the name of Jesus teaching that they are also Christ, but only one will come in his own name and teach that he is Christ. It is so important to note that Jesus said that this prophet would come, not in the name of the Father, and not in the name of Jesus, but in his own name. When a prophet comes in the name of the Father, that means he claims that God has authorized the his prophetic office and has sent him to speak as if God himself were speaking. When one comes in his own name, he himself is the source of his authority and he speaks for himself. It seems evident that this prophet will claim to be a man, speaking from the authority of man, i.e. he will be a humanist. Those three characteristics will be the most distinctive traits between the true Antichrist and his many types: He will have supernatural powers, both Jews and unstable souls from within Christian forms will believe and receive him, and he will be a humanist. There will be types of false Christs through out the age, but there will be but one in particular for which Jesus told us to be watchful and wary. We will look at this one in considerable detail when we get to vs. 15 and the Abomination of Desolation. Then Jesus said in Matt 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." The most important part of this verse is not the part that says that we will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but the part that says, "but the end is not yet." There has hardly been a person, who has lived a normal life span, since Jesus said these words that has not at some time during his lifetime seen or heard of wars and rumors of wars. Jesus said to understand that as long as we were hearing of wars and rumors of wars it was a sign that the end was not yet beginning, but that we were still in that period of time he called "the beginning of sorrows." Therefore, the absence of war, which is the only peace that the world can give, must at least play a part in the signs of Jesus' return. The witness of the Holy Spirit in scripture also agrees with this, for in 1 Thessalonians 5:2-3 it says, "For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape." Also the book of Daniel, which we shall come to shortly, says that the false messiah, or antichrist of whom we have just spoken, shall destroy many by peace. (Dan. 8:25.) Likewise the Book of Ezekiel indicates that Israel is living in peace as a nation in the promised land at the time of the end, for they are living in a land of unwalled (undefended) villages. (Ezekiel 38:11) Of all the things which Jesus mentioned in the 24th chapter of Matthew, this is one of the more unique because it has only begun to happen in our life time that peace could be used as a weapon against the spiritual welfare of the people. Nearly all of the things in these verses point to types of things that have happened in several generations, but there has never yet been a generation where peace was used as a spiritual weapon against the people. I believe this prophecy began to be fulfilled back in the early 1960's when the majority of young Baby Boomers all over the world were lead by a godless intelligentsia to believe that political peace was worth any price, even the sacrifice of truth and intellectual integrity. This generation and their mentors could not then, and still can not today, imagine a scenario worse than man annihilating himself through nuclear, or biological, or chemical warfare, or ecological mismanagement, or such like. Today, in Israel, the Helenized political leaders are likewise ready to give up anything, and anyone, to promote peace with the nations surrounding Israel. But here is the truth of the matter: If the Bible is a lie, and Jesus was a phony, then it simply doesn't matter if Israel falls or stands. And it is also irrelevant if man destroys himself or not. Who is to care after he is gone? Will the rocks or the rivers miss him? Natural man is a parasitic infestation upon the natural order who will be missed by nothing when he is gone. Will the stars or heavens care about his demise? Will the deer, or the doves, or the tigers, or the squirrels mourn for his passing? The cosmos will miss mankind when he is gone, like the sewers of earth would miss an infestation of rats. Some say that no life of any kind will survive man's folly. Even that would not be a tragedy. Who keeps the candle burning for the Easter Island civilization that perished before it was discovered? No one is crying, some think we can learn from their mistakes, and thus they try to superimpose the problems of today upon an ancient civilization, but even they do not mourn. Nature does not even care if nature survives, much less if man does. If man is nothing more than a natural being, we are way out of line in trying to impose some concern upon him that is alien to his parent. But if the Bible is true, and if Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, then man has never been in danger of destroying the planet. God has reserved that job unto himself: 2 Peter 3:10-11 A far worse scenario than that of man destroying all life on the planet and that being the end of it, is that man chooses to hate God, and his law, and his program, and thus spends eternity in the fires of Hell because of his rebellion, for the Bible says that man doesn't just die and that's the end of it. The Bible says that it is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment (Hebrews 9:27), and the Bible says it is terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31). But how can it be that the Prince of Peace taught that peace would be a sign of both the end of the age and of his return to rule in power and glory? How can the one who said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God," agree with the prophet Daniel that the one called the Antichrist shall destroy many by peace? Jesus told us that he was leaving us in this world with his peace, not peace as the world knows it, but with his peace. Therefore, there must be a difference between the kind of Peace of which Jesus is the Prince, and the kind of peace that the world knows. So what is that difference? The only peace that the world knows about is the absence of political warfare, and it was this kind of peace that Jesus was talking about when he said that as long as there were wars and the rumors of wars then end had not yet come. This worldly peace does nothing to resolve the yearnings, the malcontent, the criminality, the lawlessness, the selfishness, and such like in the human heart, while on the other hand, the Prince of Peace strikes at those problems directly through change at the heart level and not at the political level. Within the context of the Christian Faith, those who have peace at the heart level are always going to be at a disadvantage amongst those who wish to "enforce peace" at the political level unless the Spirit of God keeps the political forces in confusion. Since the time of Constantine, the church has been confused about the difference between political conquest and spiritual conquest, and political peace and spiritual peace. The hypocrisy of a spiritual church involved in political conquest became apparent to those youth of the Viet Nam Era, and knowing no other peace but political peace, they paved the road for the Antichrist with good intentions. For every spiritual attribute of Jesus Christ, Satan has a material counterpart with which he will empower his Antichrist, and political peace is his counterpart to the spiritual peace of Jesus Christ. So how should we who are being renewed in the spiritual peace of Jesus Christ respond to the political efforts of the world? If you have the peace that passes understanding planted into your heart by the Lord Jesus Christ, you can obey every ordinance of man in peace unless such obedience would require you to deny Jesus Christ as your God and King, or break the law of God, for here is the truth of the matter, the direction of man's political history has been ordained by Almighty God. God, who is the Creator and the Sustainer of all things has commanded that in so far as it depends upon us we are to live at peace with all men. He has also commanded that we must obey every ordinance enacted by political authority and that includes paying their taxes, wearing their uniforms, fighting in their battles, and enforcing their peace at their orders. Jesus said that we were to "resist not evil," and while many take that to mean that we should not fight back when wronged, that is only half of the picture. The entire context is that we should not resist when compelled by authority to serve Babylon (Matt. 5:38-41). Even Abraham waged war against unrighteous political authorities, but he was very careful that he did not become enriched by such war. This is also what John the Baptist told the soldiers who came to him asking what they had to do to repent. He told them to "do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages" (Luke 3:14). The word violence in that passage is "diaseio" and it comes from two Greek words, "dia" meaning a channel, and "seio" which means to shake or rock to and fro. We should therefore understand that the Soldiers were instructed that they personally must never be the source of violence to another man. If you believe that God wasn't smart enough to predict that eventually, in the course of his duties, a soldier would be ordered into war by political authority, you are naive about the ordination of history. God tells us that so far as it depends upon us, we must live in peace with every man, but if the political authority which He has ordained, but over which He does not now reign, orders us to violence, then we must obey, but in that obedience we are not to become personally enriched because such enrichment then makes the violence our own. Jesus did not tell the centurian (of whom we will see more later) that he would have to stop serving Rome before he would help him. He admired how well this pagan soldier understood the concept of being under the authority of a power external to himself, and Jesus said that He had not seen such faith in all of Israel. Also, it seems to me that if we are involved as Christians in the enactment of political ordinances, we must always act from the commandment that we are to be at peace with all men, even those whose lives are characterized by ungodliness. This means that we should stop trying to force feed Christian values into pagan hearts by the political process and let them live in their kind of peace until their lives are wrecked and ruined by their choices, and then they can be brought to a knowledge of the Prince of True Peace. All Christians are called and empowered only to be witnesses to Jesus Christ. Whether our occupations are involved in politics, or in commerce, or in religious service, we must all bring the principles of those occupations into subjection to the Lord Jesus Christ and witness of him from within those occupations. In using the term "religious service" in this fashion, I include all occupations which depend upon a basis of belief for their foundation such as educational occupations and community services. All Christians are called to bear witness to Jesus Christ while at the same time living in peace with all mankind. The intelligentsia is wrong, there are some things worth dying for, and obedience to the Truth and Peace of Jesus Christ is one of those things. He who holds the Truth knows real peace and has been empowered to be a witness and to endure the contradictions of this world until the end. Next Jesus said in Matthew 24:7: "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." The word translated "nation" above is the Greek word "ethnos" from which we get our word "ethnic." "Ethnos" comes from the root "etho" which speaks of habits or such things as are done by habit, or mores. Etho speaks of our habitual manners and thus becomes a concept of culture or race. When Jesus told the Jews in Matthew 21:43 that the kingdom of God would be taken from them and given to a "nation" bringing forth the fruits thereof, he indicated that The Jews as a race were losing their claim to the kingdom of God, for a time, and that their claim was being transferred upon another race of people. Since the scripture says in Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus," it seems a new type of human is being anticipated here who will replace the old type that is at once racist, sexist, and elitist. Ephesians 2:10-15 agrees with this in that it says that Jesus Christ has taken the Jewish race and all the Gentile races (ethnos is translated as Gentile in Eph. 2:11), and has created in himself a new man, which means that there were at one time two races of humanity from God's aspect, the Hebrew and the heathen, but that now there are three, the Hebrew and the heathen, and the Christian who is being made into a new man from the other two. God does not separate people by ethnicity, or sex, or social standing, but by spiritual condition and covenant. There is simply no place within Christianity for racist or sexist, or elitist attitudes and beliefs. Thinking of one's self as being a Caucasian Christian, or a Black Christian, or an Hispanic Christian or and Asian Christian is tantamount to saying, "I am a heathen Christian." You simply can not get those two terms together. They're worse than oil and water, they are like acid and base. It has been one of the most serious failures of the Church for not insisting that new converts had to forsake their parochial, "ethnic" attitudes and beliefs and become a new, united race of man whose culture and "ethnicity" are founded in the love and fellowship of Jesus Christ and not upon the cultural principles of the world. But rather than forsake them, they have been cultivated, and most Christian fathers will even today try to dissuade their daughters if they wish to marry a Christian who has come out of a race different from theirs, but will hand her over gladly to a heathen of their same racial origin. But natural man is forever racial in his cultural parochialism, and Jesus said that as the time drew near the races would rise up against each other. The word translated "rise up " has a very interesting connotation. "Rise up" translates the Greek word "egeiro" which meant to "rouse from slumber." Therefore it seems that just as there will first come a time of "no war" before Jesus returns, there will also be a distinct time when racism has been asleep for a while, but then is aroused once more, just as war is aroused once more as the forces of Antichrist begin their move. After two decades of at least near sleep in most of the western world, racism is beginning to appear again. I do not believe that this is yet sufficient evidence to indicate that this awakening of racism is that of which Jesus spoke because I can not see where it was ever that much asleep. However, the documentation of racism apart from nationalism in history is very sketchy and it could have been asleep in the past centuries and only began to be awakened during the age of enlightenment. It would seem to have been eliminated within the early church at least. I agree that the world today is full of ethnic violence in South Africa, Central America, the Middle East, Ireland, England, America, former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia just to name a few hot spots. And I can see where ethnicity is fast becoming the criteria for safe navigation of communities in much of western civilization. Some American Streets have already been cordoned off and not even the police will go in unless they are in force. Racially motivated hate crimes are being committed with greater frequency and vehemence all around the world, and every nation is being faced with increasing difficulty from trying to control such racially motivated hate crimes. But I also believe that these troubles, as bad as they are, are only types of the racially motivated hate that is going brood under the cover of a fearful, hateful unity in Antichrist's empire until every man turns against his neighbor during the battle of Armageddon. (See Zechariah 14:12-14.) Jesus said that one of the things to watch for before his return was when the ethnic groups started to rise up against each other, so we need to keep "watching." America was supposed to have been the great "melting pot" of the races. In America in particular, and in the world in general, today we are seeing the hate, distrust, suspicion, and anger of racism build up to the point of boiling over in an unredeemed people. The darkness and violence of hate, ignorance, fear, and oppression have historically followed such racist attitudes, and in a racially mixed geographic area such as North America, the possibilities for anarchy and mayhem are forever within a heartbeat of exploding within an unredeemed society. Jesus also said in Matt. 24:7 that kingdom would rise up against kingdom. Kingdoms are realms that have political, geographical, and philosophical boundaries. One of the signs that Jesus gave for the end of the age was that these political and philosophical realms would begin to rise up or awaken against each other. In verse 6 above, Jesus told us to "see" that we be not troubled. The word "see" translates a word meaning to "stare at" something. Jesus told us to look intensely and intently at the wars and the rumors of wars, and at the awakening of racial hatred, and at the awakening of political and philosophical hatred in order that we would not be troubled by them. Then next Jesus said, "for 'all' must come to pass." The word "for" in that statement ties us back to the command that we should not be troubled by what we see. The words "these things" are supplied by the translators and do not appear in the Greek text. Therefore, Jesus said "all must come to pass." I believe he was referring to the scriptural principle he had previously given us in John 10:35 that the scripture cannot be broken. That principle is a key element in watching for "all of these things" and not becoming troubled as we watch. Jesus also said in that verse that there would be famines. Nearly 2000 years after he said it, hunger has become a way of life for hundreds of millions of human beings. There are as yet only 5.7 billion persons alive on the planet, and over forty thousand children die from hunger every day. As we said earlier, by the year 2050 the best population growth models predict a population on earth of 12.5 billion human beings. You younger readers must take note; this means that the methods which are even today inadequate to create wealth and distribute resources, and to remove the waste that results from the utilization of these resources, will be in much greater disarray within sixty years, or one short lifetime. You do not have any choice in the matter, it is your heritage because of when you were born. These circumstances are coming upon you, ready or not. Humanity must change fundamentally if the most horrendous starvation, degradation, and deprivation imaginable is to be avoided. Also note that all such human projections assume an unbroken continuation of a technologically advanced civilization. We will soon see where the Bible predicts that such technology will not be the case. Today, American farmers can feed all of America and have an annual surplus only because they can convert excessive amounts of cheap fossil fuel calories into a single calorie of food. A Chinese peasant can convert about one calorie of human work into around 25 calories of food, but can not get it to a market before it spoils. The production and distribution of food for high density population centers is intimately linked to the production and availability of cheap oil. Oil can not help but continue to get more and more scarce even as demand for it continues to increase because of population growth and centralization. It has been estimated that oil production will have to more than double to meet demands, and it seems apparent that it will be necessary to discover and produce as much oil during the generation of the 2050's as the cumulative total that has been discovered in all generations previous to 2050. In an article titled "How The World Will Look in 50 Years", written by Bruce W. Nelan and published in Time Magazine's special issue, "Beyond the Year 2000," the statement was made that the importance of the Arab States will begin to fade as oil becomes less vital. Oil is going to be replaced, according to Nelan and Time, by solar power and controlled nuclear fusion. This is pure wishful thinking. Even if the technology for such energy sources were readily available today, which it isn't, it would not be available in the corn field in time to stave off world wide starvation. Some seem to think that battery operated farm implements will provide an answer, but batteries have to be charged, and it always takes more energy to charge a battery than you can get out of it as it discharges. It is a fact of physics that every such conversion between types of energy involves losses of energy to useless heat and hysteresis. Also storage batteries are heavy, and physically large which causes a diminishing return when they have to transport themselves in addition to a payload used to accomplish some very heavy work such plowing fields and transporting food. Using batteries would cause increased energy consumption not less. Wind operated wind mills could possibly be used to charge batteries, but the number of batteries required to constantly provide electrical power at today's consumption requirements for 12.5 billion humans would fill all available land areas and man would have to live in, on, under, and over electrical storage batteries. The windmills also would have to occupy so much land area that there would inevitably be conflicts between the rights of a man to use his piece of ground for his needs and the "rights" of the windmillers to occupy it with their equipment. A recent controversy has been reported in California between the windmillers and the ranchers concerning the "wind rights" that turn such mills. I just could not believe it when I read that men could actually think that they could have a monopolizing right to the wind, and to the ground that it blows across. My Grand daddy told me that if they could figure out a way to sell the air, we would lose our right to breathe. In 1900 nearly 90 percent of the U.S. population was engaged in producing some kind of agricultural crop. Some of these may have also been working at some other kind of job, but around 90 percent of all Americans produced some of their own food as a primary or secondary method of providing for themselves in 1900. The 1st World War saw the young men of that generation go off to Europe and get sophisticated. They wouldn't stay on the farm after they had been to "Paree." The end of the 2nd World War saw a further reduction in farm labor and the percentage has been going down ever since. I have read figures that indicate that today there is less than 2 to 3 percent of the population actually engaged in food production. This 2 to 3 percent must produce enough for themselves and the other 97 percent as well. The only thing that makes this possible is oil. The storage and preservation of food until it is distributed and sold is another enormous problem that is only going to become more and more difficult and costly and consume more and more oil as the population grows to 12.5 billion. As we mentioned earlier, when large, main frame, number crunching computers became available that could handle such problems, men began to mathematically model the problem of feeding the population of the earth and disposing of its waste. Eventually the models predicted that when the population reached 4 billion we would begin to experience problems in producing and distributing resources and disposing of the waste produced in utilizing those resources. Sure enough when the population reached 4 billion the general population began to notice those kinds of difficulties. These kinds of difficulties are not going to be simply tripled in a population of 12.5 billion; they are going to be exponentially worse. It would seem that famine can do nothing but increase in the future. The world population is doubling every 40 years in spite of all losses to disease, famine, war, poverty, and genocide. Even though AIDS may eventually eliminate 60-70% of the African population, it will not do so before the next generation has been begotten to be left behind in normal proportions, already infected from their parents and entirely helpless. The burdens that are going to placed upon the rest of the world to care for this generation is going to bankrupt self centered mankind, both charitably and financially. A population that doubles in spite of all starvation and disease every 40 years means that there are as many people alive at any one time as the total number of people that have ever lived before that time. The consequences of such a condition grow enormously out of proportion with each successive generation. In every generation there has to be as much wood cut as the total of all previous cuttings. There has to be as much oil discovered as the total of all previous discoveries. There has to be as much food produced as the total of all previous production. There has to be as much waste removed as the total of all previous waste. And There will have to be as much pure water as the total of pure water ever consumed. Everything upon which civilization depends will be utilized in quantities that equal the total amount ever consumed in history. The World Watch organization is predicting world wide hunger by the year 2030 as the oceans continue to yield fewer fish per capita every year, and more usable farm land is lost to urbanization and erosion. Grain production has already dropped 11 per cent per capita and grain stockpiles are at an all time low. There are 65 nations in the world today whose entire populations are dependent upon subsistence farming. Subsistence farming means each family produces only enough to provide for themselves with no cash crops left over to turn into medical care, education, recreation, transportation, relaxation, etc. Today 70 percent of the world's population burns wood for cooking and heat. Forests are soon going to become a thing of the past. According to World Watch, the American population today represents about 5 per cent of the world's total population but uses 30 per cent of its resources. If this trend continues, the rest of the world will soon get tired of supporting us in the manner to which we have become accustomed, and they will swarm over us like hungry locusts. The next sign that Jesus gave us to watch for before his return was pestilence. Jesus said there would be ever increasing pestilence. Pestilence translates a word meaning disease. There are invariably two problems associated with under nourished, high density population centers: hygiene and disease. Many of the diseases associated with famine have no cure except adequate diet, which is not available, else the disease would not be present in the first place. Such diseases are symptomatic of poverty, and poverty is symptomatic of scarcity and selfishness, which are the consequences of the profit motives in production, packaging, and distribution, of the necessities of life. We need to look no further than the Babylonian system of commerce to understand that the system has no provision for distributing any necessity of life apart from someone's profit. We can do nothing out of love without first satisfying someone's self interest. Additionally there will also be an inevitable increase in diseases such as AIDS, hepatitis, syphilis, and gonorrhea as the iniquity predicted in verse 12 abounds (We will discuss that verse in full in a moment). Also, microbe hunters from places like the World Health Organization, and the Centers for Disease Control, have recently been expressing their concerns about problems with "emerging viruses." Emerging viruses are previously unknown viruses which suddenly appear in an area and attack populations, sometimes with deadly effects. The AIDS virus is one such virus. The aIDS virus exploded when it was introduced into Africa in an area of high density urban populations with little or no sexual or moral imperatives. The yellow fever mosquito has now been found in America. New flu viruses are mutating almost faster than inoculations can be prepared for them. In 1918, before inoculations were common, one particular nasty strain killed 25 million people world wide. These microbe hunters indicate that we are at war with viruses and that as of right now the viruses are winning. The problem from such diseases from a demographic point of view is that they do little to retard the population growth, while greatly adding to societies' burdens for caring for the diseased adults and the unwanted offspring which are left behind or neglected, and they thus tend to exponentially increase the problems which cause them. We are also just now beginning to see the consequences that the indiscriminate use of antibiotics has had in producing strains of bacteria that are immune to all such antibiotics and humans are now beginning to die of infectious diseases for which no treatment is effective.
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