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Prophe-Zine Issue 076
PropheZine #76
April 15, 1999
Bob Lally Publisher
Mimi Nila Senior Editor
Rick Woodcock Asst. Editor
Abraham George Asst. Editor
Lori Eldridge Asst. Editor
Bob Ippolito Asst. Editor
ARTICLES
Gary Stearman..............Will the First Century AntiChrist Reappear?
Chuck Missler...............The Coming World Leader - The Man With a Plan
Shirley Ann Miller.........Gog and Magog
Dr. Ron Rhodes......................What Happens at the Moment of Death?
COMMENTARIES
Berit Kjos.........George W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, George Shultz,
Your Children, And The Balkan War - How Are They Linked
Submitted by Bill Koenig........by Henry Blackaby-
The Bible Explains Today's Headlines.
Francis Frangipane........."America, the Lord has need of you"
NEWS ITEMS FROM ISRAEL
ICEJ News.................Israeli Aid To Kosovo Continues
Sharon Talks To Russians About Balkans
And About Iran
Israel Marks Holocaust Memorial Day
POEMS, Etc.
Submitted by Richard, Head of the PropheZine Prayer Warrior Team
................................Just Checking In
Author Unknown..................Two Boxes ****************************************************************
Hello Everyone!
It is with a heavy heart I write this because of all the suffering of innocent people that occurs during a war. But then I am also encouraged since it is so apparent that Jesus will soon return. I will keep this short because this newsletter is a fairly large. I hope that it will bless you and give you greater discernment for the last days.
Matthew 24
3And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
4And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
5For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
6And 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.
7For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8All these are the beginning of sorrows.
9Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.
10And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
11And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
Mimi Nila
Senior Editor
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| Will the First Century AntiChrist Reappear?
| The Return of Nero
| by Gary Stearman
|
"And there are, seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space:
"And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition" (Rev.
17:10,11).
In the past, we have looked at Nero and the caesars of the first century as a treasury of clues about what the revived Roman empire of the end time might look like. After all, the future spawn of these self-deified despots is prophesied in Scripture to rise again even to control the world for a time! In the past, we have drawn some tentative conclusions about their genealogical outcomes. Now, we open the subject again, quoting certain factual elements we've drafted before, but adding a great deal of new information.
The fathers of the early church regarded Nero as the perfect model of the antichrist. Even in the first century, his disappearance from public life was thought to include aspects of the supernatural. Actually, he committed suicide, but stories arose that he was merely hiding out and would one day return to begin again his persecution of God's elect. For literally hundreds of years, rumors persisted that he would come back to carry out a satanic decree left unfinished in the first century. Obviously, they considered him much more than just an evil man.
Who was this man, and what part does he really play in the spiritual history of mankind? First and foremost, he was the cruel and unbalanced man who began the Roman persecution of Christianity. In A.D. 64, suspicion mounted that he, himself, had started the great fire of Rome, then used the already unpopular Christians as his scapegoat. In A.D. 66, the apostle Paul was beheaded by his decree. He was (and is) regarded as a raging monster an egomaniacal despot who seemed supernaturally driven to accomplish the maximum evil.
Most importantly, however, his life seems intertwined with biblical prophecy. We have examined him before. But now, there is growing evidence that he provides a major clue to an event that seems destined to unfold in the near future - the unveiling of the antichrist. If he is in the list of the seven kings of Revelation 17:10, then he is indeed significant.
A Face to Consider
If he is part of a biblical reference, we need to know as much about him as possible. Years ago, I saw his face in an encyclopedia - a photograph of a sculpted bust. At the time, I shuddered as I considered the boyish innocence that covered a callous and cold-hearted interior. I remember making a mental note to remember those features, idly speculating about what I would do if I ever ran into someone who looked like him.
His heavy, hooded eyelids, ponderous brow and prominent nose suggested an individual of a rather brazen and emotional nature. He looked like a man capable of extreme sensitivity and intuition on the one hand, and unbridled cruelty on the other. His large eyes were probably capable of a twinkling mirth, but nothing could hide their true coldness. They seemed like the eyes of an assassin.
He looked like a young man who had always been used to getting his way. The fullness in his face led me too conclude that he really enjoyed his food. Perhaps he ate too much, or was even given to gorging. As I thought about it, he clearly presented the image of a man with great appetites - even great lust.
His pouting lips exhibited an extreme and petulant arrogance. But they also seemed to characterize something of an effeminate nature. Nevertheless, there could be a fervency there. I could see those lips pursing, sneering, pressed together in a victorious smile and generally charming their audience with enthralling cadences. But it was also obvious that whining, screaming tirades could just as easily course from that twisted mouth.
And then there was the imposing chin. It brought the jutting jawline to a strong point. I could imagine it projecting forward, tilting upward - those lips pulled into a thin, downward curve - when he wanted to make a point. The word "bull-headed" came into my mind. The set of that jaw completed a picture of a man with whom one wouldn't want to spend much time. It would be impossible to stay out of trouble with him.
True, the lines of his face were soft and boyish. But that contrast only amplified the overall negative effect. Above all else, I had the impression of an incipient cruelty. Here was a fickle and unstable countenance. There could be no doubt that this was a treacherous man; a man to be avoided at all costs.
No doubt, he had a passion for control. His was the face of a born dictator. He would have been a brute who pretended to sensitivity; a tyrant who blamed everyone else for his own failures; a man controlled by his own lusts.
I wondered whether I was really seeing all these traits, or simply reading them into his face because of my familiarity with his dark history. But after thinking about it, I decided that I would still arrive at the same assessment even if I didn't know who he was.
Yes, I thought to myself at the time, if I ever see a face like this, I would do well to take note of it. Then I closed the book and let the image slip to the back of my mind for several years.
His heavy hooded eyelids, ponderous brow and prominent nose suggested an individual of a rather brazen and emotional nature. He looked like a man capable of unbridled cruelty. His large eyes were probably capable of a twinkling mirth, but nothing could hide their true coldness. They seemed like the eyes of an assassin.
Seven Roman Emperors?
But recently, I looked up that face again, it happened after I had spoken to a Baptist pastor who called with a question about the antichrist. He felt that perhaps Revelation 17, verses 8 through 11, might offer a clue to his identity:
"The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of the life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.
"And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.
"And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.
"And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition."
The pastor with whom I spoke ventured the opinion that the seven kings mentioned in verses 10 and 11 are seven emperors of the Roman empire. He wondered aloud whether or not we might analyze the verses in question and arrive at the identity of the antichrist. It is his belief that the five fallen kings presented in these verses represent the five Roman emperors of the Julio-Claudian line: Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, the last ruler of the line.
I informed him that, in fact, this theory had been advanced in years past. Among others, Bible scholars William R. Newell and Robert Govett were of the opinion that these five Roman emperors were the five kings of Revelation 17:10. This being the case, the "one" who "is" in the same verse would be the emperor Domitian, who reigned from A.D. 81 through 96. It is generally believed that this is the time period during which John wrote Revelation.
Domitian was a fierce, suspicious and cruel tyrant. His persecutions covered everybody from Roman Senators to Christians like John.
Using this analysis of the verses in question, six Roman emperors, plus one who would come, were to provide the model for the eighth man - the ultimate antichrist. The pastor and I conversed about the possibilities of this scenario.
As we talked, the face of the cruel tyrant in the encyclopedia came into my mind once again. He was none other than the fifth fallen king of Revelation 17:10 - the emperor Nero!
What if Nero is the fifth king of Revelation 17:10? Does his life and rule give us any clue to the identity of the future antichrist?
The Twisted Boy-King
Nero was the product of palace intrigue in the royal household of Rome. His scheming mother, Agrippina, married her uncle, the emperor Claudius. With the conniving aid of the freedman Pallas, the philosopher Seneca and Burrus, the powerful commander of the praetorian guard, she promoted her son to a position in the imperial household.
Claudius was poisoned in A.D. 54, and Agrippina's allies succeeded in bringing young Nero into the royal line of succession. For the first five years of his reign all went well, apparently because Burrus and Seneca were the real rulers. But the household treachery continued, reaching a new low as Nero had his mother murdered in A.D. 59.
After that, the young emperor's megalomania created a nightmarish reign of terror. Though lacking in talent, he fancied himself an artist, musician, poet and athlete. He had a vicious and vindictive personality. To cross him was to insure retribution, and probably death.
His father's corrupt ancestry and his mother's unbridled ambition had created a monster. From his early adolescence, he was bisexual. Additionally, he was given to various forms of public sexual perversion. He was foul-mouthed, foul-tempered and crude, with brutish appetites for food and wine.
History records him as mentally unstable, with a tendency to exhibitionism and self-glorification. He was unabashedly jealous of everything around him, whether popularity, rank or simply excellence of character. His vulgar self-displays became so shocking that he was soon detested by every element of Roman society. As the army, the Senate, the academicians and the populace finally turned against him, he committed suicide on June 9, A.D. 68.
Would Nero Return?
His death was accompanied by the development of a curious myth. Toward the end of the first century, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote of an event that took place in A.D. 69, during the reign of Vespasian: "About this time, Achaia and Asia were upset by a false alarm. It was rumored that Nero was on his way to them [the Roman armies]. There had been conflicting stories about his death, and so numbers of people imagined - and believed -
that he was alive."
This rumor continued into the second century and beyond. Some of the Christian faithful in the second and third centuries even believed that he would return as the antichrist. In particular, they took note of the fact that his name and title added up to the number 666, as recorded of the beast in Revelation 13.
The belief that he would rise again is referred to in Latin as the "Nero redivivus" hypothesis. In The Coming Antichrist, Walter K. Price writes, "...the most famous antichrist theory of the first century was that of "Nero redivivus." In A.D. 68, when the Roman Senate condemned Nero to death for his hideous crimes, he fled to a suburban villa and there put an end to his life. Because he died almost alone and in an obscure place, rumors began to circulate that he had fled to the Parthians from which he would come at the head of a great army to revenge himself upon the Roman world.
"The belief that Nero would return was still in existence in the fifth century A.D., for Augustine makes reference to it saying, 'Others, again suppose that he [Nero] is not even dead, but that he was concealed that he might be supposed to have been killed, and that now lives in concealment in the vigor of that same age which he had reached when he was believed to have perished, and will live until he is revealed in his own time and restored to his kingdom.'"
As the church moved into the dark ages and on toward the Reformation, the ancient belief about Nero's evil resurrection persisted. But at last he came to be perceived only as a sort of prototype - a form of the man who would arise in the latter days to rule the world. Even the secular world acknowledges these ideas. A good example is the Hollywood motion picture, "The Omen," and its three sequels. Its main character, Damien Thorn, is the spawn of demon seed. He is the child antichrist, placed in a rich and powerful foster home so that he might grow up to rule the world. A dramatic moment in the movie comes when an archeologist finds an ancient subterranean vault with a mural of the antichrist on the wall. It is a centuries-old picture of the young Damien, painted almost two thousand years ago! They recognize his face just before they perish in the cave. Where do such ideas come from?
As I pondered these things, I wondered: Was Revelation 17 trying to tell us something? Were all the seven kings Roman emperors?
Nero blamed Christians for the burning of Rome, though many suspected that he, himself, had deliberately set the fire. Rome was an overcrowded city with narrow streets. The closeness of its houses made Rome an easy prey for the fire that raged for several days. Afterward, Nero widened the streets and beautified the city.
Domitian, the Second Nero
Domitian, last of the Flavian line, was second only to Nero in his persecution of Christians. His victims were legion, including many members of his own family. One of his most ambitious goals was the complete obliteration of all the descendants of King David's lineage.
He was a vain and lazy man who selfishly sought to empower himself. Genealogically, he was a son of Vespasian and brother to Titus, who had offered to share power with him. But he refused, and when Titus day ill, he caused the royal physicians to take actions that would speed his death.
Having attained rule in this repugnant fashion, he proceeded to announce that he was a god ... not just a god, but God. He instructed the lesser regents in his retinue to address him as "Dominus et Deus Noster," Our Lord and Our God. And thus, he addressed the Senate.
Christians, who had attempted to live within the strictures of state rule, found that they could not submit themselves to the command to address Domitian as God. Their refusal to worship this despot brought torture and death upon them in unprecedented numbers.
His arrogance uncontrolled, he became increasingly bestial. He ordered that various images of himself be displayed throughout the provinces. His demonic rule became more and more grotesque. But then came a series of events that must surely have been an answer to the prayers of the saints.
Charles Ludwig, writing in Ludwig's Handbook of New Testament Rulers and Cities, tells the story:
"Since both Domitian's father and brother had been in Jerusalem, he had undoubtedly heard of the Jewish belief in the coming of the Messiah, and he had also heard of the second coming of Jesus Christ. These beliefs frightened him, and like Herod the Great, he decided to do something about it. Many Christians who refused to burn incense to Domitian were liquidated. Among these was his own nephew Flavius Clemens.
"Through Jewish prophecy, he learned that the Messiah was to be from the descendants of David. He therefore decided that he would eliminate all these descendants. Because of this determination, he arrested the grandsons of Jude. As he faced them, he demanded to know how much money they possessed. The men replied that they had a mere twenty-five acres between them. Holding up callused hands, they explained how difficult it was to scratch a living from their unproductive soil. Impressed with their seeming honesty, Domitian began to inquire about Jesus and His kingdom.
"'When asked about Christ and his kingdom - what it was like, and where it would appear - they explained that it was not of this world or anywhere on earth but angelic and in heaven, and would be established at the end of the world, when he would come in glory to judge the quick and the dead...
"'On hearing this, Domitian found no fault with them, but despising them as beneath his notice let them go free and issued orders terminating the persecution of the church. On their release they became leaders of the churches, both because they had borne testimony and because they were of the Lord's family; and thanks to the establishment of peace they lived on into Trajan's time'" [The History of the Church by Eusebius].
To his death in A.D. 96, he remained the basest of tyrants. The Senate even refused him a public funeral. But the official persecution of the church had come to an end. Years before, he was responsible for John the Apostle being boiled in oil before Rome's Latin Gate. Through a miracle, John survived, but was exiled as a slave to the stone quarries on the Isle of Patmos. In his later years, John returned to Ephesus, the city of his original arrest, where he lived out his remaining years as the elder of the church there. Domitian and John are thought to have died at about the same time.
As mentioned before, this makes Domitian, the king mentioned in Revelation 17:l0, the "one [who] is."
Down through the Church Age, this thought persisted. Walter K. Price writes,
"The Queen of France - Gerberga, wife of Louis IV - was much impressed with [the] teaching that the end of the world would come around A.D. 1000. She asked her court chaplain Adso (later abbot of the monastery of Montier-en-Der, France), to assemble all the information on this subject that he could find. He wrote a pamphlet entitled Libellus de Antichristo (little work on the Antichrist). Though the spirit of Antichrist had already appeared in such men as Antiochus, Nero, and Domitian, he said, the Antichrist himself would be a person."
Must the Seven Be Roman Emperors?
But if Domitian (known as "second Nero") is one of the seven kings, it seems almost a certainty that Nero, himself would be part of the list. And indeed, as mentioned above, the five fallen kings are usually represented as:
1. Julius Caesar
2. Tiberius
3. Caligula
4. Claudius
Added to these would be:
5. Nero
6. Domitian ["one is"]
This, of course begs two questions. First, who is Mr. Number 7? And second, are we right about the first five? We suggest a startling answer - a different view.
Following the death of Domitian, the church would never again be persecuted with the vigor that it experienced under Nero and Domitian.
Certainly there were periods of persecution that followed. All the way up to A.D. 312 and the Emperor Constantine's issuance of the "Edict of Toleration," the church saw periods of oppression. But they were never as severe as those of the first century. Constantine's edict was supposed to end all tyranny where the church was concerned. Of course, it didn't. But over the centuries, the church never saw another period of despotism as dreadful as that of the first century.
In short, there was never another candidate for that seventh position. Never, that is, until the twentieth century, and the emergence of Adolph Hitler.
Entire books have been dedicated to pointing out similarities between the biblical antichrist and the German tyrant.He summoned up the imagery of the Caesars in pomp and ceremony, modeling his entire regime after a series of ancient Roman images. Banners, wreaths, and symbols took up where the Roman rulers of the first century had left off. Like Domitian, he made it governmental policy to wipe out the descendants of King David.
Naming this enterprise "the final solution," Hitler actually believed himself to be operating under a divine mandate. As possessor of the "Spear of Destiny," and under the metaphysical unction of occult societies such as the "Society of the Golden Dawn" and the "Thule Gesellschaft," he felt ordained to establish his proposed perfect society.
The Third Reich, he said, would last for a thousand years, (No doubt, he had heard of Christ's coming to set up a thousand year kingdom on earth.) He was literally a counterfeit Christ.
Many historians have expressed the opinion that, but for a few strategic missteps, Hitler could have actually brought this nightmare to reality.
And a nightmare it was, indeed. Hitler even thought of himself as being under the control of a superpower, who manifested himself as an image of the coming superman. Armed with a technologically-superior, ruthless army, and backed by the treasure of the Holy Roman Empire, Hitler felt that he was the historical "hero" who would bring the derailed Roman empire back to reality once again.
Deceived as he was, his reign lasted for only a few years. Then, like Nero and Domitian, he was gone in the disgrace of suicide.
Revelation 17:10 refers to the seventh king in this way: "... and when he cometh, he must continue a short space."
Is Hitler the seventh king? He certainly fits the model. And as the model evolves, it seems to be built upon one principle: the seven kings are infamous for persecuting the historical Judeo-Christian system. This being the case, we must remove Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius from the list. None of them ever initiated the organized, full-scale persecution of either Judaism or Christianity, later seen under Nero and Domitian.
But there were others in biblical history who were vigorous persecutors of the Jews. The first, of course, is none other than the infamous "head of gold" (Daniel 2:38), Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. The Bible calls him the first of the Gentile kings. He was overthrown by the next of the Gentile rulers, Darius the Medo-Persian.
After that, came Alexander the Great, who but for the miraculous provision of God, would have exterminated the Jews. Out of his rule came a despot so important that almost the entire eleventh chapter of Daniel is devoted to a description of his historical disposition: Antiochus IV, Epiphanes. We hardly need to be reminded of what he did to the Jews. These would be our new candidates for the first four positions.
Nero and Domitian would, of course, retain their original placement on the list. We would, then, suggest a new arrangement, as follows:
1. Nebuchadnezzar
2. Darius
3. Alexander the Great
4. Antiochus IV, Epiphanes
5. Nero
6. Domitian
7. Hitler
These seven despots all have one thing in common: They were all used to wreak havoc upon God's chosen people, the Jews. Were it not for His grace and protection, the Jews would have been wiped out by any or all of these miscreants.
There is something else quite interesting in this list. From Antiochus to the present (the last four names), there is a common factor that may figure prominently in the unveiling of the final antichrist. This factor is genealogical. It arises out of the bloodline of Antiochus, who is in the line of Seleucus, Alexander's choice for the rule of Syria. The Seleucid Dynasty that is named after him spawned Antiochus IV, as well as a veritable rogue's gallery of successors who married into the dynasties of Rome.
As we search forward for the elusive antichrist (the eighth king of Revelation 17:11), we will examine this infamous bloodline.
The Seleucid Factor
Among various groups of scoffers, it has become fashionable to make sport of prophetic expositors who attempt to - in their words - "pin the tail on the antichrist." Yet the Bible, itself, gives tantalizing clues to his identity. As we shall see, it even suggests that his genealogical line may, in time, be fully traceable. As of now, we can only get close. But perhaps the full story of his lineage will become fully available as the time of his emergence nears.
Among other passages, Daniel 7 associates the antichrist with the final world empire, pictured as the "fourth beast." His close tie with this final power structure gives him a Gentile background, yet we know that latter-day citizens of the house of David will accept him as messiah, As Jesus said, "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive" (John 5:43). Is he Jew, Gentile or (as seems the case) both? Someone, sometime, somewhere will finally put the clues together and identify this man's dual identity.
II Thessalonians 2:3 calls him the "man of sin," and suggests that he will hold sway over the world with great power, both of oratory and dark force. He will enthrone himself in a rebuilt Jewish temple, posing as God, apparently with enough false power to pull off the charade - at least for a while. It seems likely that he will have to convince the leaders of Israel that he is a Jew.
But it is in Revelation 13 that his power over the people is seen in some detail. His persona features the ability to perform miracles as he makes fire fall from heaven and gives life to an image of the beast. He even has the power to control world economics, which he accomplishes by mandating identity numbers for every man, woman and child on earth. He, himself, has a number - the infamous 666 - usually viewed as a clue to his name. From the days of Nero to the present, many believers have attempted to link that number with a contemporary name. Usually, such names are Gentile. So far, all have failed. But that doesn't mean we should quit trying, particularly in view of the fact that the Bible says, "Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast ..."
(Rev, 13:17).
Daniel 11 and the Seleucid Dynasty
Perhaps the most telling evidence of the antichrist's identity is to be found in the complex history given in Daniel 11. A full exegesis of this chapter would fill a large book, since it covers the legacy of Alexander the Great - king of Macedon [Greece] from 336 B.C. to 323 B.C. - and his successors. During his brief 13-year rule, he conquered the peoples of the north, going as far as the Danube River. He also cut through Asia Minor, Phoenicia, Egypt, Syria and the great Persian empire of Darius to the east. Upon his untimely death at age 33, his conquered territories were divided among four of his generals. The original idea was that each of them establish a ruling dynasty.
Two of them - Seleucus and Ptolemy - are of particular interest, since it is their dynasties that are detailed in Daniel 11. Since it gives such an expanded view of these fourth- and third-century dynasties, many skeptics have reasoned that Daniel must have been written later, in the second or third centuries B.C. But it is virtually indisputable that Daniel wrote in the sixth century B.C. The Holy Spirit gave him a documentary foreview of the rise to power of the man who is considered the model of the antichrist. This fact alone gives it an extreme importance.
In this chapter, verses 3 through 20 give a compact but detailed account of the critical interactions between the houses of the Ptolomaic [Egyptian] and Seleucid [Syrian] rule. Most important to this study is the Seleucid dynasty, which begins in Daniel 11:5, with a reference to Seleucus I Nicator. Called "conqueror," he gained control of Syria and Cilicia. Although he was an eastern potentate, his philosophy was basically western. He tried to re-unify Greece, but was killed by Ptolemy II before he could complete his plan.
Seleucus II Callinus was called "glorious victor." In 247 B.C., he came to power, as foretold in Daniel 11:6-9, Seleucus III Soter ("savior") reigned for only two years. He is mentioned in Daniel 11:10. Finally Seleucus IV Philopater came to rule as mentioned in Daniel 11:20. He was the son of Antiochus the Great and brother of the infamous Antiochus IV Epiphanes. In the latter years of his rule, he attempted to loot the Jerusalem Temple treasury.
It is important to remember that both the Ptolemies and the Seleucids were Greeks, having descended from the royal houses of that empire.
From the Seleucids Came Antiochus
The Son of Seleucus I was Antiochus I Soter. The title "Antiochus" means "opposer" or "withstander", and was a favorite name of the Seleucid kings of Syria from 280 B.C. onward. With the death of Seleucus I in 281 B.C., Antiochus I became sole ruler of Coele-Syria. Antiochus II was his son, and reigned from 261 B.C. to 246 B.C.
Antiochus III was called "the great." He was the second son of Seleucus II. His exploits are predicted by Daniel in chapter 11, verses 15 through 18.
His third son, Antiochus IV, succeeded his brother, Seleucus IV Philopater [See Daniel 11:20,21] as king in 175 B.C. As a worshipper of Zeus, he imagined himself to be a manifestation of this great "father of the gods." He took to himself the title, "theos epiphanes," meaning "the manifest god." Daniel 11:21-35 characterizes him as "a vile person," and one who held complete contempt for the nation of Israel.
Since he considered himself to be Zeus incarnate, he ordered that all people should worship him as such. He sent 22,000 soldiers into Jerusalem on the Sabbath, plundering and burning the city. He sacked the Holy Temple and there, set up altars for Zeus, commanding Jews to offer unclean sacrifices and to eat swine's flesh. Disobedience brought death. He set himself up as a deity, and ordered that his birthday be honored as a high holy day. His infamous order was given on the 24th of Chislev, 168 B.C. Three years later to the day, on the 24th of Chislev, 165 B.C., the Jews cleansed and rededicated their Temple. They restored worship, giving birth to the festival of dedication called Chanukkah.
Antiochus IV Epiphanes was truly an evil man. He was driven by dark forces and became the greatest historical archetype of the antichrist - a man who stood up in the Temple and declared that he was a god. The final antichrist will simply repeat what he did, except on a grander scale.
From Antiochus to the Royal House of Rome
The eleventh chapter of Daniel, verses 36 through 45, closes with the prophecy of the "willful king." Clearly, he will be the antichrist of the latter days. But if one simply reads this chapter through, its clear intention is that there is hardly a break between Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the latter-day "king who shall do according to his will" (v.36).
In other words, Daniel seems to be telling us that the Seleucid dynasty will continue on into the latter days! If this is true, then the bloodline of the antichrist can possibly be traced. A bit later, we'll speculate on where the full record of his genetic heritage might be found.
After the horrific reign of Antiochus IV, the Seleucid line continued under the same title, with Antiochus V VI, VII, VIII, IX, X and XIII all continuing the reign of their fathers. In 69 B.C., following his defeat of Tigranes of Armenia, Lucullus of Rome awarded Antiochus XIII the rule over Syria. In 63 B.C., Pompey came to Syria and commanded that from that time forward, it would be a Roman province. This date effectively marks the end of the Seleucid dynasty and the beginning of Roman rule.
But descendants of the Seleucids continued in positions of importance long after Syria became a Roman province. For example, following the death of Nero in A.D. 68, Rome entered into a time of chaos. The year 69 A.D. was known as "the year of four emperors," as various contenders fought for control. Two of the contenders, each of whom spent a few months as emperor, were Otho and Vitellius.
According to Charles Ludwig, Vitellius, formerly a Senator, who had "arranged with the Senate to legalize the marriage between his [Nero's] mother and Claudius, was a former governor of Syria."
Here is a possible connection between the Seleucid Dynasty and the house of Nero! Why would Vitellius work to bring about the marriage of Agrippina to Claudius unless there was something in it for him? Maybe Agrippina, mother of Nero, was related to him. Why else would he take up her cause?
In "The Histories" of Tacitus, we happen across an interesting note about a group of soldiers belonging to Vitellius that may connect him to the Selucid dynasty. The event happened during the first battle of Cremona: "This delay gave the Vitellians a chance to retreat to a vineyard where a complex network of trellised vines impeded movement. There was a small wood close by, too. From this they ventured to stage a counter-attack, and in so doing managed to kill the most eager of the pretorian troopers. Among the wounded was Prince Epiphanes, who was eagerly leading his men into battle on Otho's side."
Here, we find a "Prince Epiphanes" in the first battle of Cremona, in northern Italy. He was none other than the son of Antiochus IV, King of Commagene, located on the West Bank of the Upper Euphrates. His official title was Antiochus Epiphanes, in honor of the originator of that name ... the man who had desecrated the Temple in 167 B.C., about 237 years before! And he was a loyalist in the army of Otho! Young Epiphanes had, for a time, been engaged to marry Drusilla, the youngest daughter of Herod Agrippa I. But because he refused to embrace Judaism, it was never consummated.
This tells us that by the time of Christ, the Seleucids had become intertwined with both the Herodians and the royal houses of Rome. Elsewhere, Tacitus describes the accession to power of Vespasian, following the death of Vitellius:
"By 15 July [A.D. 69] the whole of Syria had taken the oath of allegiance to Vespasian. He had also gained the adhesion of Sohaemus and his kingdom, whose resources were not to be despised, and that of Antiochus, who had great inherited wealth and was the richest client-king of all. Then Agrippa (Herod Agrippa II) arrived after a fast voyage from Rome, where secret emissaries from his people had brought him news which recalled him home while Vitellius was still in the dark. Equal enthusiasm marked the support given to the cause by Queen Berenice.
She was in her best years and at the height of her beauty, while even the elderly Vespasian appreciated her generosity."
In this historical moment, Vespasian, Herod Agrippa II, Berenice [his sister and consort, mentioned in Acts 25:13] and Antiochus IV, King of Commagene are seen conspiring together as close confidants.
It is a historical fact that the sons and daughters of the Seleucids merged into the royal families of Rome, as did the Herodians. Josephus, in Antiquities xiii, 5.8, mentions a letter from the Roman senate, which reads in part, "As to ourselves, although we have had many wars that have compassed us around, by reason of the covetousness of our neighbors, yet did not we determine to be troublesome either to you or to others that were related to us; but since we have now overcome our enemies, and have occasion to send Numenius, the son of Antiochus, and Antipater, the son of Jason, who are both honourable men belonging to our senate, to the Romans, we gave them this epistle to you also, that they might renew that friendship which is between us."
This "Numenius" is of the Seleucid dynasty who preceded Antiochus IV, king of Commagene. But he is also a member of the Roman senate, once again demonstrating the closeness between the offspring of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Roman royalty.
This should not come as a surprise, Daniel 9:26 mentions the antichrist as coming from the royal Roman bloodline:
"And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined."
In this passage, the coming prince is the antichrist, His "people" are the emperor Vespasian and his son Titus - in other words, the royalty of Rome who ordered the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. It is made quite clear that " ... the prince that shall come ... " is a Roman. This is the definite intention of the verse, and it is amply augmented by the Seleucid history in Daniel 11.
The Pages of History
This begs the question: What became of the Seleucid offspring? Very simply, the sons and daughters of Rome's Seleucid client kings disappeared into the family trees of Roman royalty. As mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, some of their genealogies may be dying in a dusty library to this day. The Vatican records are both voluminous and very ancient.
As pointed out in J. R. Church's book, "Guardians of the Grail," there many advocates of the theory that the world's final great leader will emerge from the dynastic lineage of king Merovee.
This so-called "Merovingian Dynasty" began with Merovee's rule, which occupied the years from 447 to 458 A.D. This ruling house is known to be preoccupied with the occult. Some even blasphemously say that it is descended from Jesus Christ! Of course, this cannot be true. But it is interesting that the belief is held, at all.
This ruling dynasty comes down to us in the present day as the House of Habsburg, which has genetic ties to virtually every ruling house in Europe. Most important among its luminaries are Otto von Habsburg of Austria and his son Karl, as well as King Juan Carlos I of Spain and his son Felipe. This is not to say that we absolutely know them to be the families of the antichrist.
What is missing is the genealogical connection between Antiochus IV, king of Commagene, and the dynasty of king Merovee. This time period runs roughly from the reign of Vespasian, beginning in 69 A.D. to the reign of Merovee, beginning in 447 A.D. Within this 378-year period, it is quite possible that documents exist somewhere that will validate on a secular level, that which is implied in Daniel 11. Will the antichrist one day be able to produce credentials - perhaps even a genealogy - giving him unquestioned credibility? It appears so. But at present, that information lies just beyond our reach.
The Eighth King
This brings us once again to Revelation 17:11:
"And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven and goeth into perdition."
This is the ultimate antichrist, He is said to be " ... of the seven." That is, he shares a common thread with the seven men who precede him:
1.Nebuchadnezzar,
2. Darius,
3. Alexander,
4. Antiochus IV Epiphanes,
5. Nero,
6. Domitian, and
7. Hitler.
These seven men provide us with a composite picture of the final antichrist. He will command wealth and power.He will no doubt be quite charismatic, persuasive gifted with high intelligence and drive. He will have a sense of historical destiny. He will see the Jews as a barrier to the establishment of his kingdom. Finally, he will be inhabited by an evil spirit, as was each and every man on this list.
And, as seen in the historical precedent provided by these men, society must be prepared for his arrival. The eighth man on the list cannot come forth in his fullness until society is prepared to believe in him. Who, after all, would accept a new Nebuchadnezzar, or Antiochus, or Nero as a messiah-like figure?
Perhaps this riddle is best explained in the words of II Thessalonians 2:7-12:
"For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
"And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
"Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
"And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
"And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
"That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
Among Bible-believing Christians, it is widely held that the antichrist is alive today. It is likely that even he doesn't know who he is. As it stands today, the revealing of this wicked man is being delayed by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
In short, the "spirit of antichrist" (I John 4:3) has not yet been allowed to enter this man, whoever he may be. But thanks to the Bible, we know that before he enters in power, the world must be prepared to believe the big lie.
Furthermore, we know that the world's controlling forces must be subject to a kind of insanity - the same insanity that wracked the royal houses of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.
Paul wrote to Timothy, "This know also , that in the last days, perilous times shall come. (II Timothy 3:1) We have noted before that the word "perilous" can be translated from the original Greek New Testament as "ragingly insane."
On every horizon, there are discernible signs of a gathering evil. Some of the signs are large, some are small. But they are there.
As I took at the picture of Nero's bust, I try to imagine who will ultimately be written into the eighth position on that list of the world's most infamous men. From history, I know that he will be persuasive, passionate, arrogant, a performer, and one who says he is coming to bring peace. Ultimately, he will be indwelt by the same evil spirit who inhabited the bodies of seven other men. These were men who, but for the grace of God, would have wiped out the Jews. Once and for all time, each of them would have permanently overthrown God's redemptive plan, under the Messiah.
Today, such a man waits in the wings. One day, he will receive that unclean spirit. Like Nero, Domitian, and Hitler, he will want to be received as a god. And as ghastly as it sounds, he will be. Who is he? The time of his arrival draws near.
Questions or Comments: JR Church jerryc@icon.net
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|
| The Coming World Leader
| The Man With a Plan - The Genealogy of the Antichrist
| by Chuck Missler
|
Is he about to appear on the scene?
Will he be the next Pope...the Messiah of Israel...the 12th Imam of Islam?
Is he anything to fear?
Alexander the Great, during his 13-year rule, (336 B.C. to 323 B.C.) conquered most of the known world. His empire reached as far north as the Danube River and included Asia Minor, Phoenicia, Egypt, Syria, the great empire of Persia, and reached as far east as India.
Daniel 7, 8, and 11 describe the career of Alexander the Great and his successors so vividly they constitute some of the most remarkable prophecies in the Bible. We also find that Alexander's four generals--
Lysimachus, Cassander, Ptolemy, and Seleucus
--divided the empire after his death just as the passages indicated.'
As Israel is sandwiched between the subsequent tensions from Ptolemy (Egypt) to the south and Seleucus (Syria) to the north, it is impressive to note the precision with which Daniel records their respective successors in Chapter 11.2
Exposition of Daniel 11
Chapter 11 chronicles 150 years of warfare between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. (Verses 2-20 have past; verses 36-45 are clearly future; verses 2 1-35 apparently have elements of both.)
The continued attempts by Bible critics to "late date" this passage is a testimony to its accuracy. The lineage of the infamous Antiochus Epiphanes may possibly extend to Titus Vespasian and even to our present day.
The angel (of Chapter 10) announces three kings: Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius Hystapes (Smerdis)3 [He helped establish Darius as king in the first year of his reign.]
2]The fourth king, Xerxes, would instigate trouble with the Greeks (486-465B.c.). [He appears to be Ahasureus ofEzra 4:6, Esther 1:1-12.] He instituted tax reforms, became very powerful, trained over 2 million warriors for 4 years, built special barges, and attacked Greece in 480 B.C. He crossed the Hellespont in 7 days. This attack laid the basis for the vendetta that Alexander ex-
ploited later.
3]The rise of the Greeks, under Alexander the Great, was detailed in Chapter 8.
4]Alexander died without a qualified heir. His half-brother, Philip Arrhidaeus, was mentally defective. His two sons (illegitimate Hercules, by Basina the daughter of Darius, and Young Alexander, posthumously by Roxana) were murdered within 13 years after their father's death. After 22 years of fighting, Alexander's four generals divided up the Empire:
Cassander: Greece & Macedonia.
Lysimachus: Thrace & Bithynia (AsiaMinor).
Seleucus: Syria, Babylonia (to India!).
Ptolemy: Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Petrea.
5]Ptolemy I Soter taking Egypt and Seleucus Nicator taking Syria led to 150 years of warfare and repeated trampling through
Israel. Chapter 11 chronicles this warfare between the "King of the South" (Egypt) and the "King of the North" (Syria), which continued until Rome marched east and the conquests of Pompey established Roman rule over the area.
Ptolemy Soter I Soter (323-285 B.C.) was one of Alexander's wisest and most capable generals and grew very powerful, but Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-245 B.C.) grew even more powerful. It was under Ptolemy II's rule that the great library was established at Alexandria and the translation of the Old Testament into Greek (the "Septuagint" translation) was commissioned. The famed mathematician Euclid taught geometry in Ptolemy's court.
Ptolemy I captured Jerusalem in 321B.C. on the Sabbath day without resistances However, in 316 B.C. Israel was lost to Ptolemy's rival, Antigonus. After the Battle of Gaza in 312 B.C., Ptolemy reclaimed it. Seleucus I Nicator, "Conqueror" (312-281 B.C.), who cooperated with Ptolemy, made himself the master of Babylon and established the Seleucid Empire, ruling from Antioch. He was killed by Ptolemy II. His son was Antiochus I Soter. ("Antiochus" means "Opposer" or "Withstander," and was a favorite name of the Seleucid kings from 280 B.C. onward. Antiochus II Theos, his son, reigned from 262 to 246 B.C.
6]"end ofyears" = after a lapse of several years (2 Chr 18:2; Dan 11:8, 13). A political marriage was arranged between Antiochus II and Ptolemy II Philadelphus's daughter, Bernice. Antiochus was required to divorce his own wife, Laodiceia, to facilitate this arrangement. Bernice was unable to prevail against her rival Laodiceia, who poisoned Antiochus, murdered Bernice, and set her elder son, Seleucus II Callinicus, on the throne ("Glorious Victor"). His successor, Seleucus III Soter ("Savior") reigned for only two years. [Note: This occurs after the Septuagint translation of the OT (285-270 B.C.), which included the book of Daniel!]
7]Ptolemy III Euergetes (245-221 B.C.), the brother of murdered Bernice, invaded Syria, seized the port of Antioch, and overran Seleucus' empire as far as Babylon.
8]His spoils for Egypt included 4000 talents of gold, 40,000 talents of silver, and 2500 idols. These included some carried from Egypt by Cambyses 280 years earlier. He continued more years than his rival: 24 years vs. 20.
9]After two years Seleucus reorganized and marched south against Egypt, got clobbered, and returned to Antioch with only a small remnant of his army.
10]The sons of Seleucus II were Seleucus III Ceraunus (226-223 B.C.), who was murdered during a campaign in Asia Minor, and Antiochus III ("The Great"; 223-187 B.C.), who recovered the fortress of Seleucia the province of Coele-Syria, Tyre, and then resumed the war with Egypt.6
In 312 B.C. a large Egyptian army, led by Ptolemy IV Philopator (221-203 B.C.), marched through Judea until it was met in Lebanon by Antiochus, who routed it and captured many Judean cities both west and east of the Jordan.
Initially, the army of Ptolemy IV was larger than that of Antiochus III. In the spring of 219 B.C., at the battle at Raphia (20 miles S of Gaza), Antiochus commanded 60,000 men and Ptolemy, 70,000. Antiochus was defeated with a loss of 10,000 infantry and 300 cavalry. Ptolemy, indolent and dissolute, signed a peace treaty with Antiochus III.
Ptolemy IV celebrated his victory by touring the eastern Mediterranean provinces, including Jerusalem. He was prevented from entering the Holy of Holies by paralysis. Returning to Egypt, he took out his chagrin and humiliation by persecuting the Egyptian Jews.
13]After the death of Ptolemy IV, his son, only four years old, succeeded him as PtolemyV Epiphanes (203-181B.C.). Twelve years after the Battle of Raphia, Antiochus III set out with a greater army than before for the conquest of Egyptian territory.
14]The many that stood up against the King of the South included Antiochus and his ally, Philip of Macedon, as well as risings among the vassals of Egypt. In 200 B.C., an Egyptian mercenary named Scopas attempted to wrest Judea from Antiochus. After a temporary success, he was defeated by 100,000 troops at Sidon in 198 B.C. None were able to stand against Antiochus III
("The Great").
16]"The glorious land" is Judea (cf. Daniel 8:9; Jeremiah 3:19.)
17]In 197 B.C. Antiochus III set out with a fleet to attack Cilicia, Lycia, and Caria, which were under Egyptian control. However, he encountered a disastrous defeat by an upstart power rising on the banks of the Tiber--Rome.
Antiochus' daughter, Cleopatra, was given in a political marriage to Ptolemy (arranged in 197 B.C., consummated in 193 B.C., the groom being 10 years old) along with Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Judea as dowry, in hopes that he could eventually annex Egypt. He was disappointed, however, as she became a devoted wife instead and sided with Egypt (and her new ally, Rome).
In 196 B.C., Antiochus turned west in Greece, Asia Minor, and crossed the Hellespont to seize part of Thrace. It was Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, who encouraged Antiochus III to fight the Romans. In 191 B.C. Antiochus was defeated by the Romans at Thermopylae. In 190 B.C. his army of 80,000 suffered an ignominious defeat in a decisive battle near Smyrna where the Roman commander, Lucius Scipio, forced him to renounce all claims in Europe and Asia Minor.7 He had to surrender all territory west of the Taurus Mountains and pay a heavy tribute of 15,000 talents (over 30 million dollars). He was ruined.
19]Antiochus took it out on the northeastern part of his kingdom, plundering the temples in his realm.
20]Seleucus IV Philopater (187-175 B.C.) succeeded Antiochus III, giving his son Demetrius as a hostage in the place of his brother Antiochus and, to meet heavy Roman tribute, oppressed Israel through taxation.8 After 12 years of rule, he was murdered by his treasurer, Heliodorus, who hoped to take over but was out-intrigued by Antiochus IV ("Epiphanes"; 175-164 B.C.).
21]Legitimate candidates might have included Demetrius, the son of the Seleucus IV, held as a hostage in Rome, or the younger son, also named Antiochus, who was still a baby in Syria. Antiochus IVwas the brother of Seleucus IV, who had also been a hostage for his father in Rome for 14 years. Just prior to the murder of his brother by Heliodorus, he had been recalled to Antioch. His brother died before he reached the capital and, with the help ofthe king ofPergamos and posing as the guardian of young Antiochus who was in Syria, Antiochus IV, with numerous intrigues, gained the throne.
22]"Prince of the covenant" refers to the murder of Onias III, High Priest in 171B.C.9
23]Unlike his fathers, Antiochus IV robbed the richest places of the country under his control. He attacked his enemies when they least expected it. There was a power contest between Antiochus' two nephews, Ptolemy VI Philometer (181-145 B.C.) and Ptolemy VII Euergetes (Physicon), for control of Egypt.
25]After the death ofhis mother, Cleopatra, Ptolemy IV Philometer received bad advice regarding Antiochus IV, who swept over his army. When Antiochus conquered Ptolemy Philopater, the Alexandrians brought his brother Ptolemy Physcon to the Egyptian throne.
26]Antiochus took Philometer under his protection. As uncle and nephew they ate together at one table and, with lies, discussed policy with one another.
27]Antiochus returned from his first Egyptian campaign with great riches and turned his attention to despoiling the Temple in Jerusalem.10
28]In his second campaign against Egypt, Antiochus was less successful and failed to take Alexandria. Furthermore, he encountered the Roman navy.
29]Chittim, or Kittim, is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls as a general reference to the people of the Mediterranean--Cyprus in particular. The Roman fleet of Caius Popillius Laenas sailed to Egypt after a stunning Roman victory over Perseus of Macedon near Pydna, S. of Thessalonica.11 The intimidation of the Romans caused Antiochus to return in humiliation to Syria and, looking for someone to take it out on, he then focussed on oppressing the Jews. He sent 22,000 soldiers into Jerusalem on the Sabbath, outlawed the Torah and other Jewish practices, and plundered the city.
30]The famed "Abomination of Desolation" now takes place.12 He ordered a sow sacrificed on the Holy Altar in the Temple and, on his birthday, ordered an idol of Zeus set up in the Holy of Holies.
31]The consequent outrage led to the famed Maccabbean revolt, which successively threw off the yoke of the Greek rulers and ushered in the Hasmonean period of Israel's history. On the third anniversary of the desecration of the Temple, on the 25th of Kislev, 165 B.C., the Temple was rededicated. This rededication is celebrated to this very day as Hanukkah.
This historical event took on additional prophetic significance two centuries later when four disciples received a private briefing by Jesus Himself on the Second Coming, in which Jesus alluded to a future reoccurrence of a similar desecration as the key to all end-time prophecy.14
This repetition of the "Abomination of Desolation" is the central milestone in the middle ofthe climactic seven-year period comprisingthe "Seventieth Week" of Daniel 9.15 This prophetic event requires the rebuilding of the Temple, the preparations for which have already begun.
[Inverses 1-35, approximately 135 prophetic statements have been counted.]
The Willful King of the Future
The remainder of the chapter, verses 36-45, has yielded a number of diverse views. Some have attempted to restrict the passage to the historical Antiochus IV, and while his meglamania lends itself to such views, the language seems to go far beyond that. The "Willful King" has been identified by Ibn-Ezra with Constantine the Great; Rashi and Calvin understood him to represent the Roman Empire; Jerome, Theodoret, Luther, J.N.Darby and most "Pre-trib" scholars see him as the Antichrist.
However, as so often occurs in Biblical prophecy, many times the immediate, local application of a passage clearly transcends the immediate context to yield a glimpse of a larger, more climactic application.16 The similarity to other prophetic passages is striking, cf. 2 Thess 2, etc. Verses 40-45 outline the "Armageddon Scenario" of the final conflict climaxing in Rev. 16, 19, etc. Daniel Chapter 12 continues with a clear description of the Tribulation period.
The Line Continues
After the horrible reign of Antiochus IV, the Seleucid line continued under the same title, with Antiochus V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, and XIII. The Seleucid dynasty came to an end in 63 B.C. when Pompey declared that Syria would become a Roman province.
However, the descendants of the Seleucids continued in importance and became intertwined with the Herodians and the royal houses of Rome. Following the death of Nero in 68 A.D., Rome entered a time of upheaval as various contenders fought for control. In The Histories of Tacitus, we find "Prince Epiphanies," the son ofAntiochus IV, King of Commagene (located on the West Bank of the Upper Euphrates) fighting on behalf of Otho, one of the contenders, in the first battle of Cremona. This son is carrying an official title in honor of the man who had desecrated the Temple 238 years before.
Tacitus also portrays Vespasian, Herod Agrippa II and Queen Bernice as close confidants.
Josephus mentions that Numenius, the son of Antiochus, was a member of the Roman senate, demonstrating the closeness of the the offspring of the Seleucid dynasty with Roman royalty.17
The Prince That Shall Come
The Coming World Leader--commonly known as "the Antichrist"--has 33 titles in the Old Testament and 13 in the New Testament. One of these, "The Prince That Shall Come," comes from Daniel 9:26-27 in which "the people of the Prince that shall come'' would destroy the city and the sanctuary. The fulfillment occurred in history when the Roman legions under Titus Vespasian, son of the Emperor Vespasian, destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70A.D.18 This reflexive reference to the Romans in Daniel 9:26 is one of the several reasons that most Bible scholars view the future "Prince that shall come" as a Roman or European.
A Continuous Genealogy?
A genealogical link between the original Antiochus Epiphanes and Titus Vespasian would not be surprising, and yet it is very provocative. But there may be more.
In the 5th century the royal line of the Franks intermarried with the Merovingian dynasty, which ultimately links the family trees of the Habsburgs, the House of Lorraine, Plantard, Luxembourg, Pont6zat, Montesquieu, Sinclair, Stuarts, and most of the royal families of Europe. Among contemporary luminaries are Otto von Habsburg of Austria19 and his son, Karl, and King Juan Carlos I of Spain and his son, Felipe.
(It is from this type of background that some consider King Juan Carlos of Spain and his son, Felipe, potential candidates. The lineage of the son includes 2 German emperors, 8 kings of Denmark, 5 kings of Sweden, 7 Czars of Russia, 1 king and 1 queen of Norway, 1 queen of England and 5 kings of Greece.)
The Magdalene Blasphemy
There are a number of occultic groups that hold to the outrageous suggestion that the Merovingian line is directly linked to offspring from Jesus and Mary Magdalen&0 While obviously a blasphemous lie, it is interesting that there are people who take this seriously. Could this Satanic delusion have an end-time purpose?
A Candidate on the Horizon?
History is littered with speculations as to the identity of this final Coming World Leader. While there still remains a 378-year void in the span between Vespasian (69A.D.) and the reign of Merovee (beginning in 447 A.D.), there may be dusty documents lying in some library that might validate the implied linkage. Let's watch and see.
Judas Reincarnated?
There are some who expect the Coming World Leader to be Judas Iscariot reincarnated: Ps 55:11-14; Death & Hell: Isa 28:18, Rev 6:8; Mt 12:41-43; Jn 17:12; Jn 6:7; 2 Thess 2:3; Acts 1:25, with Rev 11:7. He emerges out of the Abousso, Rev 11:7
[For a provocative description of the Antichrist's rise to infamy, read David Breese's poem, The Man With A Plan. For information, contact David Breese at: Christian Destiny, Inc., P0 Box C, Hillsboro, KS, 67063, (316) 947-2345.]
Bibliography (Recommended):
Missler, Chuck, The Coming World Leader, Koinonia House, 1995.
Missler, Chuck, Expositional Commentary on Daniel, (16 Tape cassettes plus extensive notes), Koinonia House,1994.
Pink, Arthur W., The Antichrist, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, MI, 1988.Stearman, Gary, The Bloodline of the Antichrist, Prophecy in the News.
Bibliography (No Recommendation):
Baigent, Michael; Leigh, Richard; & Lincoln, Henry; The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Corgi Books, London, UK, 1988.
Church, JR., Guardians of the Grail, Prophecy Publications, Oklahoma City, OK.
Taylor, Charles R., The Antichrist King - Juan Carlos?,Bible Prophecy for Today, Huntington Beach, CA, 1994.
Notes:
1.Daniel 7:6; 8:8, 22; 11:4; et al.
2.See our expositional commentary on Daniel
for details.
3.Herodotus III. 89-97.
4.Josephus, Antiquities, Xliii.
5.Polybius, Histories, V. 38.
6.Polybius, Histories, II. 7 in Histories 1.
7.Appian, Roman History: The Syrian Wars, XI.I.5; vii.38.
8.2 Maccabees 3:1-12, 24-31.
9.2 Maccabees 4:30-35.
10.1 Maccabees 1:16-29.
11.Livy's Annales, XLIV.37.
12.2 Maccabees 5:11-18; 6:1-11. Josephus, Antiquities, XII.ii.6.
13.The Holy Spirit includes an allusion to Hanukkah in the New Testament: Jn 10:22
14.Matthew 24-25; Mark 13-14; Luke 21-22.
15.The Seventy Weeks of Daniel are the principal foundation in understanding all end-time prophecy. This passage also includes the most amazing prophecy in the entire Bible. See our briefing package Daniel's 70 Weeks.
16.The references to the origin and career of Satan in Isaiah 14: 12-17 and Ezekiel 28:12-19 arewell-known examples. The allusions toAntiochus Epiphanes are another.
17.Antiquities, xiii, 5.8.
18.Some confuse the destruction of the Temple with Jesus' prediction that it would receive the idol in the Holy of Holies (the "Abomination of Desolation"). During the ferocious siege of 70 AD., the Temple caught fire and was subsequently dismantled to retrieve the gold. There was no opportunity to establish the desecration fitting the Biblical specifications.
19.For background on Otto von Habsburg in his present role as a member of the European Parliament and his comments over lunch last year, see the briefing package Iron Mixed With Clay.
20.The Prieur6 de Sion is among the elusive secret societies that traces its interests from the Knights Templar and is believed to have global government ambitions.
21.Matthew 24:24.
22.2 Thess 2. See our From Here to Eternity briefing package for a more complete discussion.
23.2 Corinthians 2:11.
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|
| GOG AND MAGOG
| by Shirley Ann Miller
|
--"And they went up upon the breadth of the earth, and compassed
the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city" Apocalypse of John
Who, or what is Gog or Magog? David in various Psalms, Joel (Ch. 3), Habakkuk (Ch. 3), Zechariah (Ch 8 and 14) and Micah (Ch 7), all allude to the great army of Gog coming against the land of Israel. The Apostle John only mentions the name briefly in Revelation 20:8, but Gog and Magog also appear in the text by Ezekiel (38 and 39). Does the fire mentioned in Revelation (20:9) consume only Gog and Magog, who encompassed the camp of the saints and the New Jerusalem, or does it consume the entire world?
When John, in the Book of Revelation, refers to Gog and Magog he associates "them" with many peoples from many nations who reside "in the four quarters (or corners) of the earth. John also refers to the time-period after 1,000 years (known as the Millennium). John then informs us that these people of Gog and Magog "went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city" (20:9). Interestingly, in the Revelation of John, this occurs after the 1,000 years, and the "saints" are considered to be "believers in the Messiah, Jesus Christ," and the "beloved city" could none other be than "Jerusalem." To the Jewish nation, Jerusalem is forever the eternal capital of Israel. All the nations surrounding Jerusalem desire the same: The Palestinians want to make Jerusalem their Palestinian capital; an Islamic city to Islam; a Roman Catholic/Christian city to the Pope; and the U.N. basically rejects Jerusalem as the capital of any one nation and wants to make it an international city belonging to all (see article on THE NEW WORLD ORDER here).
THE FOUR CORNERS
Is our earth, on whose surface we dwell, peradventure some square or oblong, with right, acute, or obtuse angles?
Is it not certainly a sphere or almost perfect globe, whose diameter from one pole to the other is found a little less than that from east to west, drawn through at the equator?
IBN EZRA, 1812
If you read the article on THE COVENANT A PROMISE WRITTEN IN THE STARS, you will certainly be aware of the four-square shape configuration for the 12 tribes of Israel during the Exodus, the four-square shape of the land for their inheritance in the Promised Land, the four-square shape for the city of Jerusalem, and lastly, the four-square shape of the New Jerusalem of Revelation. Therefore, it should be rather easy to understand what John meant by "the four corners" of the earth. What corners are these? John refers to the four corners of the earth with Jerusalem as the center!
As an example, if you were standing in the center of Jerusalem and drew two lines which cut or cross one another under your feet, one from east to west, another from north to south, you would have drawn four right angles, each of ninety degrees. This is what John
efers to as "the four corners" of the earth; i.e., Gog and Magog,
nd would include all of the "then known" nations as well as any
uture undiscovered ones. Gog and Magog are all of the nations in the world that surround Jerusalem.
THE FAMILY OF NOAH
To understand further who these nations comprise we can find further evidence in the descendants of the family of Noah where in Genesis Magog is the second son of Japhet--but no evidence of Gog here. Gog isn't mentioned until you read of him in Ezekiel 38 and the 20th chapter of Revelation. Although, there is one further somewhat obscure reference to Gog in Chronicles 5:4, the grandson of Reuben. Could it be that the Gog of Revelation and Ezekiel (38:6) are none other than the same person known as Gomer, the elder brother of Magog, the first of the seven sons of Japhet?
According to Josephus, Noah's ark came to rest at the mountain of the Corydaeans in Armenia (Josephus, Whiston, Ch II). The sons of Japhet include: "Gomer, Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras." The sons of Japhet were referred to in Genesis 10:5, as the Gentiles and later the forerunners to the European nations. "By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations." Beginning in the mountains of Taurus (Turkey) and Amanus then migrating throughout Armenia, Asia, Caucasus, Greece, and Europe, these were in part the nations comprising the early descendants of the children of Japhet: Galatians or Galls/Gauls (France); Gomerites or Cimmerians (Turkey); and other countries including Belgium, Britain, Spain (Iberians), Germany, Switzerland, and Netherlands; the Scythians/Magogites (Goths, Huns, Moschis, Russians, Siberians); Romanians (early Dacians); Medes (Madai or Persians); Cappadocians (Parthians/Armenians); Thracians (Bulgarians, No. Greece, Athenians, No. Turkey); Rheginians (So. Italy); Paphlagonians (No. Asia Minor bordering the Black Sea, No.Turkey); Phrygians (Balkans/Turkey); Tharsians of Tarsus (SE Asia Minor/Antiochia); Cyprians of Cyprus (Alashiya); etc. (Wiseman, 1849).
Interestingly, in a book entitled, "Science and Revealed Religion," (1849) the author indicated the Scythians (Magogites), mentioned by Aristotle in his classification of the human races, were the Germanic tribes, which were found scattered over the whole of Scythia. They were first mentioned in Julius Caesar's "Commentaries," and Tacitus' book on "Germany," where he describes these early Indo-European people as "barbarian" giants with one pleasing quality, "...they are content with one wife." This country, as described by Herodotus, is unlike the Scythia of Ptolemy, in its confinement to Northern Asia, but also comprised "Dacia, Moesia, and all of the country north of Thrace." All the inhabitants of this region were Germanic. This can be documented from various monuments and descriptions given by Ovid in his exile in Scythia when he writes of the Scythians as fair haired (i.e., yellow or light-colored) with blue eyes. ("Hic mea cui recitem nisi flavis scripta Corallis, Quasque alias gentes barbarus Ister habet Corringius, Frankfert, 1727, trans. Wiseman). Adamantius and Polemon, both followers of Aristotle, gave similar descriptions to the inhabitants of the north as being the Scythians, "homoapheticus," or of the lineage of Japheth. NOTE: During the horrible appendage of the Hitler regime, one must be reminded of one of Hitler's goals in his attempts to annihilate the Jewish race as being of inferior progeny: Hitler purposely produced a Japheticus-type, cloning of "his super breed of humans" consisting of blonde, blue-eyed German children.
RUSSIA FROM THE TIME OF CHRIST TO WORLD WAR I
Before the modern-day Russian people inhabited what we now know as Russia, they migrated from their original home in Asia.
The Slavic people came into the Southern area of Russia during the time of Christ establishing various settlements and outposts. The first kingdom was settled by Rurik, a Northman, and by the Seventh Century a number of cities were established before the Byzantine
mpire and later Tartar invasions. The first Czar was Ivan the Terrible, who began building a mighty empire, but it was Peter the Great (1672-1725), who brought the progress of western civilization to the area. He encouraged and brought great strides in education, industrial pursuits, commerce, great ship building projects, and military advancements, including the establishment of
a new army. Peter the Great brought civilization and identity to the Russian people, including his promotion to the leadership of the Orthodox church.
The next few hundred years Russia was at odds with Sweden, Poland (who was essentially blotted off the map through successive Territorial divisions), and as part of the first opposing coalition against Napoleon Bonaparte (France), who later defeated the Russians at Friedland during the Winter of 1806-07. This war ended with the Russian Czar and Napoleon signing of the Peace of Tilsit which excluded Russian-British commerce and the recognition of French control over Italy. At the time, the Czar had not realized how this move would greatly hinder Russian commerce. As a result, he later reconsidered and reopened Russian ports to trade with Britain. Angered at Russia's defiance, Napoleon gathered together a great army and entered Russian territory. He defeated the Russian army at Borodino with heavy losses and temporarily occupied the ravaged and mostly destroyed city of Moscow.
Later, after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, European maps had to be redrawn. Countries, including Russia, sent delegations to The Congress of Vienna, and as a result of the Congress, Russia gained two territories: Warsaw and Finland. The Quadruple Alliance in 1815, finalized an agreement between nations to stabilize Europe and maintain the renewed boundaries of the European nations. This honorable system, unfortunately, did not work and various nations found themselves being encroached upon, and at the time, Russia became one of the bad-boys while seeking expansion in the Far East in efforts to extend the Trans-Siberian railway in the direction of the Pacific thereby gaining access to Port Arthur (1903). This aggressive action brought about the Russian-Japanese War (1904-5), where a defeated Russia retreated from its recent attempted acquisition of Chinese territory.
During the later economic revolution, many drastic socialistic ideals were adopted promoting radicalism and defeating capitalism.
Governments slowly seized power and control of economic Production. Russia adopted the theories of Karl Marx' (1818-83) Socialism in efforts to sway its system of private capitalism to governmental control.
Another problem which has carried over into the current crisis in the Balkans is that Russia's long-held "...historical mission was to gain economic, political and religious control of Constantinople and the straits of Bosphorus and Dardanelles" (Fielders, 1931).
Constantinople became Emperor Constantine's capital for the New Rome of A.D. 330, "a city enthroned on seven hills," until A.D. 1453 when Constantinople was converted into the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul. The straits of Bosphorus brought Istanbul wealth from the revenues obtained from fishing boats and the tolls paid by ships passing though the Bosphorus.
"Another factor was Turkey. Her Mongolian people were Mohammedans in religion [Muslim]...A third factor was Turkey's Christian subject states: Serbia, Rumania, Greece, Bulgaria and Montenegro, all of whom had fought for and gained their European independence by 1908" (Clarke, 1932). (3) When the Russian Czar demanded control of the Russian subjects located in Turkey, it began the Crimean War (1853-1856). Seeing what was taking place in their midst, other countries entered into the conflict: "France, to gain a foothold on the Catholic Holy Places and England in opposition to Russia" (4). The Russians were defeated at Sevastopol and also observed the neutralization of previously protected territory. The Treaty of Paris (1856) essentially was organized to stop Russia from advancing into Turkey. This matter
nfortunately wouldn't remain settled for long.
Twenty years later, Turkey crushes the Bosnian/Bulgarian revolts (1875) and defeats Serbia and Montenegro which results in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877. In this war, Russia again becomes allied with Montenegro, and also Serbia, fighting against Turkey with one intended purpose: the annexation of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Russian control. The Russo-Turkish War left Turkey defeated (1878) with lost territory surrendered to her enemies (The Treaty of San Stefano). These decisions were later revised at The Congress of Berlin Treaty where Austria gained control of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Austria completed this annexation in 1908), and England standing in opposition to any further advancements by Russia into Asia Minor. Bulgaria then deparated and declared independence from Turkey. Turkey then went to war with Italy over Tripoli which then led to the Balkan Wars (1912-13) leaving Turkey with another defeat. Now enters Germany who proposes peaceful relations and trade with Turkey - but in reality desired its control in order to open a railroad route between Berlin and Baghdad - that angered Russia, among other nations, and later brought war with Germany. All of this going on around the same time-period and while Russia scrambled to build a vast army to gain a foothold over Constantinople.
It was all of these simultaneous events occurring all at once that brought about the tensions at the onslaught of WWI. Sidney Bradshaw Fay in "The Origins of the World War I," claim the newspaper press as the underlying cause, and this in conjunction with a murder in Bosnia. On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian Crown, was murdered by a pro-Serb sympathizer in Bosnia. On July 23, the Austrian government forwarded a letter of ultimatum demanding restitution or penalty.
When the Serbian's didn't respond satisfactorily, Austria declared war on July 28, 1914. "Russian mobilization caused Germany to
eclare war on Russia, August 1, and this was followed by similar declaration on France, August 3. In order to attack France, German troops entered Belgium, an act which brought England into the war." (5) And so the story goes.... After a number of defeats, Russia withdrew from the war in 1917, the same year the United States entered the campaign. World War I ended on November 11, 1918.
This series presented in conjunction with ATHID LAVO, "The Coming Age" and the betrothal of the Bride.
To Be Continued May 1999
- Part Ii Will Include
(1)Are Gog And Magog The Same?
(2)Old Rome Or Constantinople - "The City Enthroned On Seven Hills?"
(3)Why Does Ezekiel Refer Only Once To Magog But Eleven Times In Reference To Gog?
(4)Where Did Anyone Get The Idea Of Only
Russia" In This Configuration Of Nations?
(5)And Much More Surprising Information!!!!!
Shirley Ann Miller Lampholder Publications http://www.hsv.tis.net/~sammie/page2/html sammie@traveller.com
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|
| What Happens at the Moment of Death?
| By Dr. Ron Rhodes
|
Modern science would tell us that death involves the "cessation of all life (metabolic) processes." But seen in such terms, death is strictly a physical, material event. It does not give recognition to the nonmaterial (spiritual) part of man.
From a biblical perspective, human beings are made up of both a material part (the physical body) and an immaterial part (the soul or spirit). When a human being physically dies, his or her immaterial part departs from the material body.
The New Testament Greek word for "death" literally means separation. At the moment of death, man's spirit or soul separates or departs from his body. This is why, when Stephen was being put to death by stoning, he prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59). Verses such as this indicate that death for the believer involves his or her spirit departing from the physical body and immediately going into the presence of the Lord in heaven. Death for the believer is thus an event that leads to a supremely blissful existence.
For the unbeliever, however, death holds grim prospects. Indeed, at death the immaterial part (soul or spirit) departs from the material body and goes not to heaven but to a place of horrific suffering (Luke 16:19-31).
Both believers and unbelievers remain in a disembodied state until the future day of resurrection (see 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17). And what a glorious day that will be! God will reunite believers' spirits with their resurrected physical bodies. These bodies will be specially suited to dwelling in heaven in the direct presence of God -- the perishable will be made imperishable and the mortal will be made immortal (1 Corinthians 15:53). Unbelievers, too, will be resurrected, but they will spend eternity apart from God (Revelation 20:11-15).
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*** How is death described in the Bible?
Many people haven't the foggiest idea of what to expect beyond death's door. French philosopher Francois Rabelais, upon his deathbed, said, "I am going to the great Perhaps."
Unlike the view of Rabelais, the Bible is quite clear as to what we can expect beyond death's door. Death is described in a rich variety of ways in the Bible, enabling us to understand a great deal about this mysterious event. For example:
DEPARTING
The great apostle Paul said, "If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far" (Philippians 1:22-23). Paul considered departure from earthly life and into the Lord's presence something to be desired.
When it finally came time for Paul's death, he said, "For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure" (2 Timothy 4:6). Paul was drawing on Old Testament imagery in this verse. In Old Testament days wine was poured around the base of the altar as an offering (Numbers 15:1-12; 28:7,24). Paul viewed his own impending death -- his "departure" -- as an offering poured out to Christ.
DISMISSAL FROM EARTHLY LIFE
Recognizing that God alone is sovereign over the timing and circumstances of death, Simeon, after beholding the Christ-child as God had promised, said, "Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace" (Luke 2:29). In death God sovereignly dismisses one from earthly life, at which time he or she enters the afterlife.
How does God's sovereignty over death relate to earthly causes of death? It is important to recognize that even though there may be immediate "earthly" causes of death -- such as a disease, a gunshot wound, a car wreck, or the like -- still, it is God who is sovereign over death.
Remember Saul in the Old Testament? First Chronicles 10:1-4 tells us that the immediate cause of Saul's death was the enemy's arrows and his own sword. But then, in verses 13 and 14, we read, "Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord; he did not keep the word of the Lord, and even consulted a medium for guidance, and did not inquire of the Lord. So the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse" (1 Chronicles 10:13-14, emphasis added). Despite the immediate circumstances that brought death for Saul (arrows and a sword), God was nevertheless sovereign behind those circumstances.
EARTHLY TENT BEING DESTROYED
The apostle Paul graphically described death as an earthly tent being destroyed: "Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands" (2 Corinthians 5:1).
Our present bodies, Paul says, are but temporary and flimsy abodes. They are weak, frail, and vulnerable. We "camp" in these "tents" during our journey toward heaven.
Our earthly bodies -- in their present mortal state -- are not designed to be lasting habitations. But a time is coming when these "habitations" will be resurrected, and our resurrection bodies will be permanent and indestructible. That is a day to look forward to.
PARADISE
Jesus spoke of death in terms of entering into paradise. To one of the thieves being crucified with Him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43).
Paradise is a place of incredible bliss and serene rest in the very presence of God (2 Corinthians 12:2). It is the seat and dwelling place of the divine Majesty. It is where the glorified Christ dwells. It is the residence of the holy angels. And at the moment of death, Christians enter this blessed dwelling place.
THE PHYSICAL BODY "SLEEPS"
Death is often described in the Bible as "sleep," for the body takes on the appearance of sleep. This is what Jesus was talking about when He said to the disciples, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up." His disciples replied, "Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better." Jesus had been speaking of death, but His disciples thought He meant natural sleep. So Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead" (John 11:11-14).
Like Lazarus, the Old Testament King David "fell asleep" in death. When David "had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his fathers and his body decayed" (Acts 13:36).
Similarly, when Stephen was being stoned to death, he prayed, "'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.' Then he fell on his knees and cried out, 'Lord, do not hold this sin against them.' When he had said this, he fell asleep" (Acts 7:59-60).
It is critical to keep in mind that the reference to "sleep" pertains only to the physical body and not to the soul. The soul does not sleep. It is fully conscious. The believer's soul in the afterlife is fully awake and active in the presence of God (Revelation 6:9-11). The unbeliever's soul is fully conscious in a place of great suffering (Luke 16:19-31).
TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE REASONING FROM THE SCRIPTURES NEWSLETTER: Send e-mail to ronrhodes@earthlink.net with the word "Subscribe" in the body of your letter.
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PROPHEZINE NEWSLETTER - Commentaries
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| George W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, George Shultz,
| Your Children, And The Balkan War - How Are They Linked?
| by Berit Kjos
|
George W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, George Shultz, your children, and the Balkan war -- how are they linked?
Why does it matter? And who is George Shultz? How did he help rewrite history, redefine morality, and prepare America to accept the atrocities that are now paving the way to the new world order?
If you are as concerned as I am about America's shift from traditional values and factual education to global values and psycho-social strategies for "lifelong learning," you would want to know the answers. You might also wonder why Texas Governor George W. Bush would choose George Shultz, who negotiated the 1985 U.S.-USSR Education Exchange Agreement, as advisor on his presidential exploratory committee. Or why Robert Dole chose Shultz as an advisor during his quest for the presidency in 1996.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
These alliances reflect the new perspective that motivates our globalist leaders to set aside the old rules of involvement and chart a new course for the world. From their point of view, the old-fashioned national sovereignty (or independence) is out, and global solidarity is in. Now it's up to the media and our educational "change agents"
to persuade the masses to accept their view of the earth as a global village. NATO's recent decisions fit right in, for the mainstream media messages that accompany the attacks on Serbia help desensitize the public to actions that from the traditional perspective would have been an unthinkable violation of America's foundational laws and values.
But the old rules don't fit in the new world order. "Nations that stick to stale old notions and ideologies will falter and fail," said former President Bush, when introducing the Republican version of our international education system.2 Al Gore would surely agree. At a 1991Communitarian conference in Washington, he said, "Seeing ourselves as separate is the central problem in our political thinking." 3
Gore's conclusion was quoted in the book, Spiritual Politics, co-authored by Corinne McLaughlin, the first task force co-ordinator for the President's Council on Sustainable Development. McLaughlin, who likes to quote Djwhal Khul, spirit guide to theosophist Alice Bailey, also taught her mediation strategies at the Department of Education, Pentagon, and the EPA. 4
"There really is only one sin--separateness," she states in her book. "War is more likely to spring from rampant nationalism, ethnocentrism, and intolerant religious fundamentalism--all extreme and separative attitudes. . . . What is needed as a cure for separateness is a deep sense of community-that we're all in this together." 5
SHULTZ AND GORBACHEV
Mikhail Gorbachev shares her contempt for nationalism and religious fundamentalism, i.e. biblical Christianity.
The goal of this unrepentant Communist continues to be a socialist world government with power to manage and monitor every human resource according to the will of an elite "Council of the Wise."
Back in 1995, George Shultz served as Chairman of the Board of Advisors of the Gorbachev Foundation, which had been "created to assist in the process of building global consensus for our common future." The same year, he co-chaired Gorbachev's first annual State of the World Forum in San Francisco together with Ted Turner, Maurice Strong,6 and other international leaders "chosen for their internationally recognized contributions to designing our emerging global civilization." Among the speakers was author Sam Keen, who announced that --
"The ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren't enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage." 7
Attending the Forum as a member of the press, I heard the thundering applause that followed Keen's statement.
Whether Shultz agreed with audience or not, this popular suggestion shows the Forum's general attitude toward human lives. Despite the noble rhetoric about saving the oppressed, the overriding sentiment indicated that people count only if they conform to the new ideology and serve the world community. Therefore the masses must be trained, managed, and monitored -- and the loss of lives due to politically expedient conflicts matters little. The major players in this transforming process are the media, the international education system, and a global surveillance system. All are nearly in place 8-- thanks to Shultz, Clinton and others who share their vision for managed conformity and strive to fulfill it.
SOVIET INDOCTRINATION IN AMERICA
Shultz's friendship with Gorbachev dates back to his years as Secretary of State in the Reagan administration9 a time when many of us simply trusted the Republican cabinet to represent American families. In the early eighties, few of us realized that Shultz and David Hamburg, President of the globalist Carnegie Corporation, were using their authority to negotiate a binding international agreement with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.10 Its terms required that we trade our technology for the brainwashing strategies used to indoctrinate Soviet children, modify behavior, and monitor the masses to ensure compliance with Soviet ideology. 11
To see what George Shultz did to undermine our American education system, rewrite history, change values, and prepare America to accept a new role in the "international community," ponder the following quotes from The Keys of This Blood by Malachi Martin:
"Within scant months of Gorbachev's election in March of 1985 to the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, he and President Reagan met at their first summit in Geneva. . .
November 19-20,1985 . . . . [They signed] the General Agreement on Contacts, Exchanges and Scientific Technical Education and Other Fields. . . . It authorized mutual exchange programs, the homogenization of curricula, the sharing of facilities and the mutual indoctrination of the two peoples involved. . . .
"Cooperation would cover all computer-based instruction, instructional hardware and curriculum design for all grades of primary and secondary education, as well as college and university studies. The obvious goal was a total homogenization not only of the methods of teaching and learning, but what was to be taught. . . .
"Cooperation, for instance, in the 'social sciences' turned a blind eye to the official prostitution of psychiatry and psychology by the Soviet Union as clinical tools for inflicting mental and physical torture as political punishment and for disposing of dissidents. The USSR had been banned from the World Psychiatric Association in 1983 for such practices. ...
"Or take cooperation in the humanities. As taught in the Soviet Union, all humanities are marinated in Leninist Marxism as a matter of course. And history is distorted by a thoroughgoing Marxisation of ideas, by the systematic suppression of facts, and by downright lies. One might wonder what common curricula might be drawn up between the USSR and the US. . . . "
". . .the aim of the General Agreement -- at least from the point of view of the Wise Men of the West --
was 'to transform the shape of the world'. . . because 'sooner or later we are going to have to face restructuring our institutions so that they are not confined merely to the nation-states. . . . '"
"That agreement came from already established drawing boards. . . . For both parties intend to create nothing less than a new arrangement in all human affairs -- 'a new world order,' to use a consecrated phrase both Gorbachev and the Wise Men employ. . . .
"Those early policies also reflected that blithe and trusting acceptance by the Wise Men of basic Leninist thinking. . . as they took the field with the leader who had been judged. . . most likely to succeed in fulfilling Lenin's ultimate dream of Soviet messianism. . . ."12
That messianic leader was Gorbachev. His blueprint for revolution came, not from Lenin, but from Antonio Gramsci. This Italian Communist had aroused Stalins's wrath by suggesting that Lenin's revolutionary plan wouldn't work: the "oppressed" proletariat in Christian nations could not be incited to violence against the bourgoise. After all, in America the two groups prayed together. So Gramsci wrote a new blueprint for world revolution. Before long, his plan for Communist infiltration of the media, university, church, and government was changing the leadership, beliefs, values, and attitudes of our nation. The primary assault was on biblical absolutes and Christianity, which must be crushed as a social force before the new face of Communism could rise and flourish.
Malachi Martin gave us a progress report:
"By 1985, the influence of traditional Christian philosophy in the West was weak and negligible. . . .
Gramsci's master strategy was now feasible. Humanly speaking, it was no longer too tall an order to strip large majorities of men and women in the West of those last vestiges that remained to them of Christianity's transcendent God." 13
Whether we agree with Martin's conclusion or not, the process he describes matches history. George Shultz had helped pave the way. The merger of US and USSR education strategies laid the foundations for the new program for training human resources and monitoring compliance. To bring everyone into the web, they linked political correctness to success through the national-international workforce development program signed into law by Clinton in 1998. When fully implemented, only those who demonstrate conformity to the new standards for attitudes, values and group thinking would be rewarded with work and college. 14
THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Apparently, Governor George W. Bush, the frontrunner among Republican presidential candidates, approves of this system. His education record in Texas shows his support.15 No wonder, since his father adopted the six goals of UNESCO's world education system and made them the center piece of America 2000, the Republican version of Clinton's Goals 2000. You read part of this 1991 announcement earlier, but it's worth repeating. If the media had warned us, we might have awakened to the current revolution:
"Nations that stick to stale old notions and ideologies will falter and fail. So I'm here today to say, America will move forward.... New schools for a new world.... Re-invent--literally start from scratch and reinvent the America school.... Our challenge amounts to nothing less than a revolution in American education." 16 President Bush was referring to a paradigm shift in education that would produce a corresponding shift in our culture. In this context, a paradigm is a cultural model or mental framework that determines how people understand and perceive reality. A paradigm shift means cultural transformation: a totally new way of thinking and seeing. In the new paradigm, the old absolutes based on the Bible and the Constitution must be reinterpreted or discarded. So when Bush spoke of "old notions and ideologies" and a "revolution in American education", he had already prepared his plan for changing the minds of America. The management system had been designed by UNESCO, and the psycho-social strategies for altering our children's beliefs and values had been promoted by UNESCO but imported from the Soviet Union.
In other words, everything that had made American education the envy of the world was now obsolete. In the ashes of the old ways would arise the UN plan for global education, tested in the Soviet Union, and designed to mold compliant servers for the 21st Century "sustainable communities." 17
THE PARADIGM SHIFT: Total Transformation
NEW PARADIGM OLD PARADIGM
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Beliefs Based on Bible Blend of earth-centered religions
Culture Western individualism Global solidarity
Values Based on Bible Based on human idealism
Morals Moral boundaries Sensual freedom
Rights Personal freedom Social controls
Economy Free enterprise Socialist collective
Government By the people By those who control the masses
The masses would be controlled through the Hegelian dialectic (consensus) process18 by globalist leaders who would view the world through the new filter of globalism. Polls, propaganda, simple slogans, and continual conflicts would be essential to its success. In fact, the greater the perceived crisis, the faster the leader can assume the coveted political powers that true freedom forbids. President Clinton has already mastered these totalitarian strategies, as Gorbachev suggested in a 1993 editorial:
"Bill Clinton will be a great president if he can make America the creator of a new world order based on consensus." 19 Shultz's ties to Gorbachev link him to a network of leaders determined to unite the world under a socialist banner.20 To them, national sovereignty, the U.S. Constitution, biblical absolutes, and parental rights are offensive obstacles21 that hinder progress. They use the word "democracy" but refer to a world where, as in Communist countries, only the compliant are free to express their opinions. 22 In this context, expedient lies are more valid than truth, and a human life has no value apart from its place in a political agenda.
CONFLICT, CRISIS, AND KOSOVO
Now reconsider the NATO assault on Yugoslavia. What makes no sense from a traditional perspective, makes perfect sense to those who see this war and world from a globalist perspective. To them, it makes sense to destabilize independent nation-states in order to create the excuse needed to enforce uniform UN rules everywhere. It makes sense to control the mainstream media and use it to persuade the masses that bombs bring peace, that bloodshed "saves," and that American aggression is motivated by a loving "moral imperative". It makes sense to conceal American losses, the death of the innocent, the broken laws, and Clinton's refusal to follow his military leaders' pre-war advice when it clashed with his political goals.
From a traditional perspective, it cannot be "in the best interest" of our nation to stir worldwide animosity toward the U.S. and other NATO nations and risk involving Russia and other nations with nuclear capability, but it may well be in the "best interest" of those who would accelerate the surrender of our sovereignty to the United Nations, which despises Western culture.
Keep in mind that our leaders are no longer playing by the old rules. In the new paradigm , expediency replaces truth, facts and logic. If a devastating conflict moves the world community closer to their collective goals, they reinterpret or suspend their own rules. It doesn't matter, since few know or care whether or not the bombing of Belgrade violates NATO statues and U.N. guidelines. To minds trapped by the seductive vision of solidarity, the end justifies violent means.
GOD'S PERSPECTIVE
Long ago, the people who followed Jesus misunderstood His message and sought to crown Him king. But Jesus didn't come to free His people from their Roman rulers. He came to save us from bondage to sin, fill us with His life, and enable us to see reality from His perspective.
From His high vantage point, the conflicts of the world look less formidable. Yes, we are moving toward world governance. Yes, our past, present and potential presidents have seemed to place global solidarity above U.S. sovereignty. Yes, a war is raging, killing the innocent, threatening to escalate, and distracting the public attention from other political activities that endanger our freedom and security. But our God reigns above it all. When we trust and seek His guidance, He shows each of us our role in the battles ahead. When we follow Him, He will surely lead us in His triumph. (2 Cor. 2:14) The author of Psalm 2 saw the earthly conflict from God's perspective. His words are as relevant now as ever:
"Why do the nations rage,
And the people plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying,
'Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us.'
He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The LORD shall hold them in derision.
Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
'Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion.' . . .
Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him."
End Notes
1. Through the War Powers Act and various executive orders and PPD's, our President has assumed powers never intended by our founders. Some argue he now has the right, at least for 60 days, to conduct a war not approved by Congress.
2. See Zero Tolerance for Non-Compliance at http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/zerotol.html
3. Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson, Spiritual Politics (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994),147.
4. Stated during a talk at a 1995 mini-UN Conference in San Francisco titled Celebrating the Spirit, which I
attended as a reporter.
5. McLaughlin, 147-148.
6. Maurice Strong was the executive director of the UN Environmental Programme, founder of Planetary Citizens, director of the World Future Society, founder and co-chair of the World Economic Forum, member of the Club of Rome, trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and Aspen Institute, and member of the UN Commission on Global Governance. He currently heads the Earth Council, which works with the UN to implement an Earth Charter -- a global code of conduct based on earth-centered spirituality and globalist values.
7. From Sam Keen's summary of the Roundtable discussions on "The Global Crisis of Spirit and the Search for Meaning" at the State of the World Forum, San Francisco, September 27 to October 1, 1995.
8. See "Trading U.S. Rights for UN Rules: a report on Executive Order 13107" at http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/turfur12-98.html
9. Shultz replaced Alexander Haig as secretary of state in July 1982, after Haig's forced resignation during Reagan's first term. He had served as secretary of labor and secretary of the treasury in Nixon's administration.
10. David Hamburg later became a participant in Gorbachev's State of the World Forum.
11. See http://www.crossroad.to/text/quotes5.html
12. Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood (New York, Touchstone, 1990), 390-393.
13. Ibid., 398-399.
14. See http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/hr1385.html
15. See http://www.texaseagle.org/torch/04-98.html#stw
16. Former President George Bush announcing America 2000, White House, April 18, 1991. America 2000: An Education Strategy (Washington: The
17. U.S. Department of Education, 1991), 50, 51, 55.
18. See http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/la21_198.html
19. See Mind Control at http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/mc9-24-98.html
20. Mikhail Gorbachev, "New World Order: Consensus," The Cape Cod Times, January 28, 1993.
21. See http://www.crossroad.to/text/links.html and scroll to the last part.
22. See Clinton's War on Hate Bans Christian values at our website: http://www.crossroad.to
See "Trading U.S. Rights for UN Rules: a report on Executive Order 13107" at http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/turfur12-98.html
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Note from Bill Koenig:
Below is Henry Blackaby's message, The Bible Explains Today's Headlines.
This article was in Religion Today.
God has started judging the world, Henry Blackaby says. It is a tragedy when Christians are oblivious to God's impending wrath and fail to respond to his warnings, the influential Southern Baptist author of the popular Experiencing God (Broadman & Holman) Bible study says.
...Troubles are increasing in many ways, but Christians often don't "make the connection" between calamities pictured on the front page of newspapers and God's warnings in Scripture, Blackaby said during a conference at First Baptist Church in Roanoke, Va., March 8. A recent gunfire attack on missionaries in Uganda, an anthrax scare last week at Southern Baptist Convention headquarters in Nashville, and many natural disasters are evidence that God has set in motion a process of increasingly severe judgment, he said.
..."If you start to see things happening, make the connection"
between events and God's judgment, Blackaby said. Christian laymen, leaders, and theologians make a mistake when they pay attention to those who scoff at the idea of God controlling events, he said. Disasters such as earthquakes, fires, drought, or El Nino climate changes have physical causes, but behind them "it's God," Blackaby said.
..."Scripture is about God," Blackaby said. It is a guide that explains who God is and what God does so that "you will know what to do and what is happening." Christians must believe the Bible's promises and warnings, he said. "When the Lord speaks from his throne, the one response is to be silent and listen."
...Nonbelievers don't know "the ways of God like we, his children," Blackaby said. "The world tells you to interpret everything that happens in terms of godlessness." Yet God speaks to Christians and they "hear things that nobody else hears." God's people are "the exclusive custodians of the ways of God."
...The world has "lost the fear of God," Blackaby said. "When you lose the fear of God you lose the fear of sin, and when you lose the fear of sin you are headed for judgment."
...God's judgment is incremental in its pattern, coming in "six or seven steps" to give people time to repent, Blackaby said.
First God "speaks a word" to people as their conscience informs them that they are committing sin. If there is no repentance, God "sends someone to speak to you" about the sin. If there still is no turning from sin, God begins a remedial judgment "designed to turn you back to God and get your attention." Judgment then increases in severity, he said.
...The "last line of defense" is when God sends a prophet to warn of impending judgment. If the prophet is spurned, God "removes his presence," a coldness and emptiness takes God's place, and judgment is certain.
"Final judgment is thorough, radical, and total, with no turning back," Blackaby said.
...Christians must respond immediately to God's warnings. They must "humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways," Blackaby said, quoting Chapter 7 of II Chronicles. Then God will forgive sins and heal the land.
Christians should ask themselves whether their families are praying and their churches are a "house of prayer," Blackaby said, or whether lesser activities take precedence.
...Christians who confess their sins and pray should expect resistance from Satan, Blackaby said.
Koenig's International News - Bill Koenig - http://watch.org/
Post Office Box 671164, Dallas, TX 75367
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Excerpt from "America, the Lord has need of you" a new book soon to be released by Francis Frangipane Questions or comments go to webmaster@frangipane.org
Chapter 1 A World Without America
Recently, a number of respected church leaders, frustrated with America's slow turn to repentance, have proclaimed that divine wrath is coming to our land. "If God does not destroy America," one influential pastor wrote, "He will have to repent to Sodom and Gomorrah."
Certainly, there are many things morally wrong with America, but America is not Sodom or Gomorrah. Neither is it a re-emergence of the spirit of ancient Babylon. You will not find charged against this land the "blood of prophets and of saints and of all who have been slain on the earth" (Rev 18:24).
America does not answer to any singular prophetic profile. It is not the Promised Land, but it is a land of promise. For those who predict the decline and fall of this nation, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but America has only just begun to rise. Indeed, as we enter the 21st century, we will find this "one nation under God," imperfect as it is, will continue in ascendant power.
It is easy to call for, predict and anticipate the manifestation of divine wrath. It plays perfectly into our fears. Once you adjust your perception to expect doom, religious zeal supplies all sorts of apocalyptic visions of the end. The problem is, these visions are not true. I have heard scores of dated "doom and destruction" predictions over the last thirty years. None have been even remotely fulfilled. Why? Simply, those who said "Thus saith the Lord" had not heard from the Lord. They were only speaking from their fear and impatience. They predicted a third world war, the end of the world and Armageddon; but instead we are seeing the church uniting in reconciliation and prayer, revival, and millions of converts coming to Christ worldwide.
The Lord spoke about discerning the origin of prophetic words in the book of Deuteronomy. He said, "And you may say in your heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?' "When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him" (Deut 18:21 22).
God's word plainly says, "If the thing does not come about . . . the Lord has not spoken." We all make mistakes. I have "been there and done that" myself, so there is no condemnation here. Still, it is time we rise above being manipulated by fear and press toward the vision God has for this land.
Now, let me make two things clear. First, if you are trapped in habitual sin, you should fear. There is only one antidote to this fear: Get right with God. Second, until the transformation of our mortal bodies, the Lord's corrective judgments will always be with us. He needs to judge what is wrong in us, the church and this nation.But let me assure you, divine judgment is guided by divine mercy. It is not in the Lord's heart to destroy this nation; humble and then heal, yes, but not destroy.
My plea is that the church would see America as God does. He is more patient in working His will than we are in waiting for the fulfillment of it. God is using America to keep the world open for harvest, and we must hold onto and pray that vision forth. Yet, if we have no vision for the United States, may the Lord reveal His passion for mercy even when we are convinced He is warning of wrath.
If the Nazis Had Won World War II
To help give us perspective on Christ's view of America, let's imagine what civilization would be like today without the United States.
Where would the world be if the leading Axis powers, Germany and Japan, had defeated the Allies in WWII?
To make this "alternate reality" credible, let's weave into our imaginary world some facts about America. Prior to WWII, America was in serious spiritual decline. The moral restraints of the Victorian Era had evaporated in the heat of the "Roaring Twenties." Organized crime brought gang violence and extortion; corruption infiltrated huge segments of government. Racial injustice against blacks was rampant and prejudice against Irish, Italians, Asians and Jews was a way of life. Then, in 1933, the singular redeeming virtue of the times, prohibition of alcohol, was repealed. It passed by a national vote of almost 75%.
These were the facts concerning America in the twenties and thirties. America suffered the consequences of its sins, but God had no intention of destroying this land. The Lord knew what evil was rising in Germany; a strong America was vital to God's plan.
But imagine if, because of the sinfulness of America by the mid-thirties, frustrated church leaders had begun to ask God to judge the nation. And suppose He actually did what these short-sighted leaders asked: He allowed the Great Depression to crumble into anarchy and civil war, which fractured the U.S. into three regional sub-countries: the North, South and West.
So, when World War II exploded, America simply did not exist. By 1943, the tidal wave of German power had crushed all its surrounding nations, including the United Kingdom. Soon, all Africa cowered beneath the Swastika. In the East, the Nazis, who had been working on nuclear weapons, unleashed them upon sixteen Russian cities. Twenty-five million people died in the atomic blast and, with them, mankind's hope of resistance.
The Japanese, meanwhile, were pillaging China in the Far East. The Imperial Army then rolled southwestward and overwhelmed India and Pakistan, making surrogate armies of their vast multitudes. They then fulfilled their blood lust, crushing Southeast Asia and Australia with exceptional violence.
By 1944, the empire of the Rising Sun ascended over Asia to the Hawaiian Islands; Japan's western boundaries extended to Pakistan and central Russia. The Third Reich ruled everywhere else. Throughout the world a grid of satanic control locked in place, securing the spiritual realms over earth in impenetrable darkness.
The Consequences
It is not hard to imagine the above scenario, or something like it, if in the thirties the balance of power in the world was void of the United States. Obviously, in spite of its sins, God did not destroy America. Instead, He healed our nation and actu ally made it stronger!
Yet, what would civilization be like today if the concept of a Free World had died during World War II? Let's return to our alternate reality, only the time frame is today. America is reunited, but it is ruled by Nazi Germany and policed by German SS troops and Gestapo. Democracy is not to be found anywhere on earth. The world we live in is a totalitarian society void of freedom.
"Mein Kampf", Hitler's life story, is taught and applied in every level of academia; his racist ideologies are enforced and framed in America's new Constitution. Adolf Hitler has not just replaced George Washington as our founding father, he has taken the place of Jesus Christ as savior of the world. Even our calendars have been reset. The first year of the New Order coincides with Hitler's birth year. American children enter schools singing hymns to the Fuhrer, who is deified among the multitudes.
Americans have been conditioned to believe that their new world, having been cleansed of Jews, Gypsies and other "undesirables," has evolved into a purer form of humanity. Dark-skinned non-Europeans have learned to accept their roles as inferiors; they are classified as "servant races."
All liberty is gone. There exists no freedom of press or right of protest. There is no balance of power in government, no political parties, no open debate and no forums of ideas.
There is a state church, but no longer is freedom of religion a civil right. There exists no open, vibrant evangelical church. Pentecostalism is considered a mental disorder and those who practice spiritual gifts are institutionalized. Though there might, indeed, be a true, underground church, attendance is at the risk of one's life. There are no evangelical books, no contemporary Christian music, no spiritual media resources. "Billy Graham" is a common, but insignificant name.
Certainly, one of the worst consequences would exist in the Middle East: There would be no Israel. In fact, except for those few Jews hiding in the remote recesses of the earth, a world without America would be a world without Jews. For Israel has been restored beneath the shelter of American strength.
Yet, beyond all this, the most tragic reality is that, since WWII, the expansion of evangelical Christianity has virtually ceased. More than half a billion souls, worldwide, have entered the kingdom of God since 1946, but instead of a great harvest the apostasy has reached its full zenith.
The fact is, in spite of what is wrong and sinful in America, without its role as the leader of the free world, there would be no harvest today. Indeed, there would be great heartache on earth and much less joy in heaven in a world without America.
Excerpt from "America, the Lord has need of you" a new book soon to be released by Francis Frangipane Questions or comments go to webmaster@frangipane.org
Frangipane's website http://www.frangipane.org
To order, call 1-319-395-7833.
America, the Lord has need of you book coming in spring All rights reserved.Questions or comments go to webmaster@frangipane.org.
Advancing Church Ministries 5300 N Park Place NE, Ste 108, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402-6220 Phone: 319-373-9310; Fax: 319-373-3012
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PROPHEZINE NEWSLETTER - ISRAEL IN THE NEWS
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ICEJ News Service
MONDAY, APRIL 12 1999
ISRAELI AID TO KOSOVO CONTINUES
As Israel continued to airlift humanitarian aid to Kosovar Albanians sheltering in Macedonia and Albania, the country today welcomed 104 refugees from the war-torn Balkans.
Arriving on a special flight from Skopje, Macedonia, the refugees were taken to a field study center run by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. The base was used to house refugees from the Bosnian civil war in the early 1990s.
The Jewish Agency has now sent more than 100 tons of aid and supplies to the countries neighboring Kosovo, including tents, blankets, winter clothing, non-perishable milk, and baby formula.
Israelis continue to donate money and supplies to this cause.
SHARON TALKS TO RUSSIANS ABOUT BALKANS ...
Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon held talks with Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov today to discuss the situation in the Balkans, according to press agency reports from Moscow.
Sharon brought up the subject of three U.S. servicemen held prisoner by the Serbs. He said earlier he would urge Russia to pressure Belgrade to release them.
Officials in Moscow said the two also discussed the Middle East peace process and Israel-Russia relations.
Sharon has taken flak in Israel for lukewarm support for NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia.
Before flying to Moscow, he held talks in Washington with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who brought up the subject of his recent remarks relating to Kosovo.
Confirming this, State Department spokesman James Rubin told reporters the U.S. "would like to see the maximum support from our friends and our allies for the just cause that we are fighting for in Kosovo."
In a statement released at the weekend, the Israeli Foreign Ministry stressed that Israel "fully supports the efforts of the United States and NATO to bring about a conclusion of the [Kosovo] crisis as soon as possible."
It said Israel found totally unacceptable "any act of ethnic cleansing."
... AND ABOUT IRAN
In Moscow today, Foreign Minister Sharon held talks with his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov, on the subject of the transfer of missile technology to Iran.
The meeting followed a recent visit by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, during which a decision was taken to establish a Russian-Israeli commission to monitor the proliferation issue.
Sharon also raised the question of Russian arms sales to Syria, another regional military power hostile to Israel.
Syrian President Hafez el-Assad was due to visit Russia today, to discuss buying military equipment. He called off his visit at the last minute.
The foreign minister, on his third visit to Russia in several months, has been accused by political opponents at home of cozying up to Moscow in an attempt to score election points with Israeli voters of Russian origin.
But Israel today emphasized that the visit was not mere posturing, as the subjects under discussions were serious.
Netanyahu slammed the opposition for what he called the "miserable custom" of attacking him and ministers while they are on diplomatic missions abroad.
He said in a statement the subject of preventing the transfer of non-conventional weapons technology from Russia to Iran topped Sharon's agenda.
"Israel is coordinating with the United States concerning the policy to combine incentives for and pressure on Russia toward preventing this transfer," Netanyahu said.
ISRAEL MARKS HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY
At sunset today, Israel begins the commemoration of Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day.
Tonight, in a ceremony at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, six torches will be lit - one to represent each of the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis. The torch lighters will be six survivors, who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust in their homelands of Libya, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Holland and Lithuania.
Tomorrow morning at 10 am, air-raid sirens will sound, prompting Israelis to stop whatever they are doing and stand in silence for two minutes, to honor the memory of the victims.
Ceremonies will be held across the country, while radio and television programming is dedicated to relevant subject matter. Places of entertainment are closed.
As part of a project called "Every Person Has a Name", names of Holocaust victims will be read out at functions held at the Knesset, as well as in schools, universities, youth centers, and municipalities.
Also tomorrow, about 2,000 people from around the world will participate in the annual March of the Living at Auschwitz, the Nazi extermination camp in Poland where up to 2.5 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered during the Second World War.
Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day has been marked in Israel every year since 1951, by Knesset resolution.
· For a moving Holocaust memorial experience, have a look at the following website:
LOCKERBIE: LOOKING AT THE IRANIAN LINK
AS two Libyan suspects await trial before a Scottish court in the Netherlands for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, theories continue to abound as to the true story behind the outrage.
Internet websites, popular outlets for conspiracy theorists of every persuasion, have long offered the world a range of versions of who was behind the bombing of Pan Am's flight 103 over Scotland, which cost the lives of 270 people, mostly Americans.
These range from a Mossad plot to smear the Arab world - the hypothesis of an American
airline pilot - to an anti-drug operation that went badly wrong when a terrorist switched a Drug Enforcement Agency operative baggage at Frankfurt airport.
But one theory that emerges over and over again, and has been detailed in numerous books on terrorism, is that Iran ordered the attack to avenge the accidental shooting down by the "USS Vincennes" of an Iranian passenger jet several months earlier. Two hundred and ninety people died when the ship shot down an airliner it mistook for a warplane over the Straits of Hormuz.
Within weeks of the Lockerbie disaster, Middle Eastern experts were unambiguously blaming Iran, whom they said paid a cash-strapped Syrian-based PLO offshoot, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) to carry out the attack.
Two days after the Pan Am bombing, according to Neil Livingstone and David Halevy in their definitive book INSIDE THE PLO, Iran's embassy in Beirut received a communication from the Interior Ministry in Tehran. The message, monitored by foreign intelligence agencies, congratulated the ambassador on a "successful operation" and gave instructions to hand over the remaining funds promised to the PFLP-GC.
In 1994, the makers of a film on Lockerbie used the Freedom of Information Act to secure the release of a report compiled by a United States Air Force signals intelligence unit during the Gulf War.
Dated March 4, 1991, the report accused Iran of paying the Lockerbie bombers $10 million to carry out the attack.
It mentioned the PFLP-GC by name, and referred to the shooting down of the Iranian airbus.
In early 1997, a senior Central Intelligence Agency source told the German newsmagazine FOCUS that the CIA was aware of PFLP-GC's role in the bombing.
The source said President George Bush was reluctant to blame Syria - which sponsors and oversees PFLP-GC activities - lest this upset his Middle East peace efforts.
Later that year, the story emerged again in Germany, where a senior dissident Iranian intelligence operative told law enforcement officials that Iran had ordered the bombing to avenge the Vincennes affair.
Abolghassem Mesbahi, a former co-founder of the Iranian intelligence agency, told police Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati asked Libya and Palestinian terrorists to help blow up an American airliner. Iran dismissed the allegation.
With all eyes on Libya, the U.S. State Department and British Foreign Office have repeatedly said there was no evidence linking any other country or organization to Lockerbie.
Unlike some of the other theories circulating, the Iran-PFLP-GC one does not rule out the possibility that the two indicted Libyans may well have been involved in planting the bomb.
Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, alleged Libyan intelligence agents, were stationed at the Libyan Arab Airlines office in Malta at the time of the bombing. Evidence against Al-Megrahi revolves around claims he bought clothes from a Maltese store that were contained in the suitcase containing the bomb on board flight 103.
According to U.S. and British investigators, the bomb was in an unaccompanied bag that was checked on to an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt on December 21, 1988. At Frankfurt it was transferred to Pan Am, and then put aboard the 747 in London, which exploded over Lockerbie later that night en route to New York.
In a paper on the PFLP-GC written a year after Lockerbie, David Tal of Israel's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies linked the Palestinian group, Iran and Libya to the attack, and said Syria "also apparently approved."
"It is generally believed that the bombing attack was carried out in retaliation for the accidental downing by an American naval cruiser of an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988, and that it was but one in a series of attacks planned by the organization at the behest of Iran.
"The PFLP-GC reportedly received a large sum of money from Iran and Libya in payment for perpetrating the operation, in addition to a monthly financial stipend."
Tal wrote that substantive evidence was found in the possession of a PFLP-GC cell captured in West Germany - three bombs similar in design to the one used in the Pan Am explosion.
The PFLP-GC enjoyed Libyan support and patronage for many years, but a year after Lockerbie, Muammar Gadhaffi expelled the organization from the country, saying he was renouncing international terrorism.
This bulletin was compiled and written by Patrick Goodenough
ICEJ NEWS SERVICE
MIDDLE EAST DIGEST, PO BOX 1192, JERUSALEM, 91010, ISRAEL. tel: +972-2-5631418 fax:+972-2-5669970 ICEJ website: http://www.icej.org.il
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Poems...etc.
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(Submitted by Richard, Head of the PropheZine Prayer Warrior Team)
Just Checking In
A minister passing through his
church in the middle of the day,
Decided to pause by the altar
and see who had come to pray.
Just then the back door opened,
a man came down the aisle,
The minister frowned as he saw the man
hadn't shaved in a while.
His shirt was kinda shabby and
his coat was worn and frayed.
The man knelt, he bowed his head,
then rose and walked away.
In the days that followed,
each noon time came this chap,
Each time he knelt just for a moment,
a lunch pail in his lap.
Well, the minister's suspicions grew,
with robbery a main fear,
He decided to stop the man and ask him,
"What are you doing here?"
The old man said, he worked down the road.
Lunch was half an hour.
Lunchtime was his prayer time,
for finding strength and power.
"I stay only moments, see,
because the factory is so far away;
As I kneel here talking to the Lord,
this is kinda what I say:
"I JUST CAME AGAIN TO TELL YOU, LORD,
HOW HAPPY I'VE BEEN
SINCE WE FOUND EACH OTHER'S FRIENDSHIP
AND YOU TOOK AWAY MY SIN.
DON'T KNOW MUCH OF HOW TO PRAY,
BUT I THINK ABOUT YOU EVERYDAY.
SO, JESUS, THIS IS JIM CHECKING IN."
The minister feeling foolish,
told Jim, that was fine.
He told the man he was welcome to come
and pray just anytime.
Time to go, Jim smiled, said "Thanks."
He hurried to the door.
The minister knelt at the alter,
he'd never done it before.
His cold heart melted, warmed with love,
and met with Jesus there.
As the tears flowed, in his heart,
he repeated old Jim's prayer:
"I JUST CAME AGAIN TO TELL YOU, LORD,
HOW HAPPY I'VE BEEN,
SINCE WE FOUND EACH OTHER'S FRIENDSHIP
AND YOU TOOK AWAY MY SIN.
I DON'T KNOW MUCH OF HOW TO PRAY,
BUT I THINK ABOUT YOU EVERYDAY.
SO, JESUS, THIS IS ME CHECKING IN."
Past noon one day, the minister noticed that old Jim
didn't come.
As more days passed without Jim,
he began to worry some.
At the factory, he asked about him,
learning he was ill.
The hospital staff was worried,
but he'd given them a thrill.
The week that Jim was with them,
brought changes in the ward.
His smiles, a joy contagious.
Changed people, were his reward.
The head nurse couldn't understand
why Jim was so glad,
When no flowers, calls or cards came,
not a visitor he had.
The minister stayed by his bed,
he voiced the nurse's concern:
No friends came to show they cared.
He had nowhere to turn.
Looking surprised, old Jim spoke up
and with a winsome smile;
"The nurse is wrong, she couldn't know,
that in here all the while
Everyday at noon He's here,
a dear friend of mine, you see,
He sits right down, takes my hand,
leans over and says to me:
"I JUST CAME AGAIN TO TELL YOU, JIM,
HOW HAPPY I HAVE BEEN,
SINCE WE FOUND THIS FRIENDSHIP,
AND I TOOK AWAY YOUR SIN.
ALWAYS LOVE TO HEAR YOU PRAY,
I THINK ABOUT YOU EACH DAY,
AND SO JIM, THIS IS JESUS CHECKING IN."
If this blesses you, pass it on...
********************
Two Boxes
I have in my hands two boxes
Which God gave me to hold
He said, "Put all your sorrows in the black,
And all your joys in the gold."
I heeded His words, and in the two boxes
Both my joys and sorrows I store
But though the gold became heavier each day
The black was as light as before
With curiosity, I opened the black
I wanted to find out why
And I saw, in the base of the box, a hole
Which my sorrows had fallen out by
I showed the hole to God, and mused aloud,
"I wonder where my sorrows could be."
He smiled a gentle smile at me.
"My child, they're all here with me."
I asked, "God, why give me the boxes,
Why the gold, and the black with the hole?"
"My child, the gold is for you to count your blessings,
the black is for you to let go."
Author Unknown
