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Fulfilling the New Covenant

The Rapture and Anti-Christ

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Thank you for your testimony and revealing the truths of scripture. The church is so very saturated with "false teachings" these days that it is very refreshing to hear from a truth-filled man of God! I am a man of some 60 plus years that has thirsted for truth over some 35 years of which I have actually found very little within our church "families". My truth comes from the only source that it does come through: The Holy Spirit revealing as I seek out His help desperately. I do have a question that I already have answered within myself: Does satan come as the antichrist prior to the "rapture" of the church and what are your considerations on "The Rapture" of the church theory. 

LMB

Mr. B,

Thank you for your kind words. 

I am a well-studied man, with a fair understanding of the world, history, and Christianity, (which also means there is far more that I do not know than what I do.)  However, God has taught me over the years in many very graphic and personal ways to treat His word, particularly the New Testament differently from all other kinds of knowledge.  I "study" the world; I "believe" what God says.  This is not "faith versus reason" at least I don't see it that way.  Reason has to have a basis, what God says in the New Covenant is the only unmoving rock upon which we can base our reason.  And of course, when I say "what God says in the New Covenant", I am not talking about a stagnant word on the page that we figure out, but in fact Jesus living in us, made real by those words.
 
I say all this  to approach an answer to your question.  For me, what God says in the New Testament is absolute. (So long as I understand that the English words have been translated correctly.)  So when it comes to "the rapture" I can have nothing to say; it is not a New Testament topic.  I do know that the NT teaches over and over that the most important event in my future is the resurrection (not going to heaven.)  Paul states more than once that we groan and weep and long for the resurrection because it contains the answer to all that we desire, i.e., the ability to walk fully with Jesus in all glory with no shadow or memory of separation.  With that comes all other fulfillment.  None of that is found in "heaven"; those who are in heaven are without bodies, longing and waiting for the same thing we are.
 

Then I go to 1 Corinthians 15.  In that chapter, near the end, Paul states clearly that when our bodies are made incorruptible, at that moment, death is swallowed up in victory.  Earlier in the chapter, he states that the last enemy to be destroyed is death.  That settles it for me.  That is God's timetable.  For myself, I need pursue it no further, trying to draw murky doctrines out of passages I don't understand.  The resurrection cannot take place while sin, Satan, and the world run around unchallenged and undefeated.

 
God is in this thing to win: God is in us to win.  God intends to defeat sin, Satan, the world, and death in and through His people, filled with all the power of Christ, right here on this earth.  Every word God spoke in the Bible, He spoke into this age and into this earth.  If God does not fulfill even one word of that which He spoke concerning us right now in this age and on this earth, He is finished, Satan is correct, God is wrong.  Do you see that in my understanding, the whole idea of a "rapture" is a mockery and a scorn against the nature and person of God.  That is, "God can't win in His people here, He has to jerk them off to heaven before He can clean them up there".
 
At the same time, we know that right now, as we trust and believe in Jesus with all of our hearts, that He is in us, that He fills our humanity, and every part of who we are He carries in Himself, we also know, that not all that God says is happening in us right now as it must to be fullfilled.  
 
I read in the NT that there is indeed two parts to Christ's second return.  To most Christians, the first part means, "God, get us out of here" but I see this: Jesus says a most extraordinary and precious thing in John 14.  He says that He will come to us, reveal Himself to us and that He and His Father will make their home in us.  Peter also commands us to set our hope (expectation - the focus of our eyes) fully upon the grace, the empowerment of God inside of us, that will come to us at the time of the unveiling, the revelation, the apocalupsis, of Jesus Christ. 
 
Here is exactly what I am looking for.  I have no intention of leaving this earth.  This earth belongs to God and to me, it does not belong to the wicked.  Heaven is not my home, though I am created to live in both heaven and on the earth at the same time.  But the earth is a big part of my inheritance.  It is always the wicked who are "taken away".  If this is not the time, and I pass on to be with the Lord, I see that as temporary.  I and those with HIm would continue waiting and longing for the moment of our return.  Now, all of this that I am saying is utterly strange to Christianity, but you know that it fits verse after verse in the New Testament.
 
Meanwhile, here I am.  How is Christ going to triumph, to win, to defeat sin and death and all things in me and through me?  I have my eyes set, my face set, my hope set, fully on a moment that I know is coming very soon, when Jesus Himself will come quietly and secretly to many whom He has chosen across the earth, those who separate themselves from the nonsense of the compromised church and who are waiting eagerly in expectation of faith, not for an escape, but for empowerment, not to become a great name, but to see the challenge against God - and sin, and death, and Satan, and the world defeated, totaly, right here on this earth, in this age, in our lives, and in our bodies.  That moment of enablement is coming.  It will transform us and empower us, but not in a showy way, not with a big splash.  And we will stride through the coming darkness with the nourishment, the refuge, the help that all Christians will soon so desperately need.
 
Because, you see, the "rapture" is one of Satan's more successful traps.  How many millions of Christians are taking everything that antichrist gives them convinced that "The Antichrist" cannot be on the earth because they are not raptured.  From my study and understanding of the world, it is without argument in my own mind, that right now, antichrist is winning primarily because of the support received from the American Christian church.  Without that support, antichrist would not be able to fulfill its role in the plan of God.
 
How many Christians will turn their back on God and walk away when they discover their pastor lied to them about escaping terrible times?  The majority will.  And those who do not will be desperate and confused, they will need all the kind and caring help they can get.
 
I am not looking for "The Antichrist."  There is the spirit of anti-Christ that includes both the Christianity that pledges allegiance to the world and, primarily, all of Judaism.  Judaism and Israel today are open, in your face, rebellion against God.  Judaism since the cross denies that Jesus is the Christ, scornfully refuses to accept the Messiah God sent them, which John said is "anti-Christ."  Paul said that God has made the natural Jew the enemy of the gospel for our sakes, and Paul commanded us by the Spirit of God to cast out the natural Jew and his false claim to the inheritance - ("Come let us kill him that the inheritance may be ours.")  The church refuses to obey God, but has cast all blame upon an innocent people, the Arabs, bearing false witness against them and joining in their murder.  [In any of these words I am not suggesting in any way anything intended to bring hurt to any individual person, Jewish or otherwise.]
 
So many Christians imagine that "The Antichrist," or the beast, will look something like Dracula, obvious and easy to detect.  It never enters their minds that it cannot be anti-Christ unless most Christians believe it is from God.
 
The beast of Revelation 13 is simply modern human government, socialistic, democratic, bureaucratic, holding all monopoly on power, armed with weapons of destruction, controlling every aspect of everyone's life.  The modern state, especially the American, rules by absolute violence.  You cross its will, you die or disappear into prison.
 
The seven heads of that beast are open to conjecture.  Obviously the beast is pulled this way and that, because the heads compete with each other.  The American church imagines that they can ride the beast, controlling it by putting a "Christian" into office.  The satanists who control America laugh every time they succeed in getting a Christian into office to cloak their own deeds.  Christians, like sheep, are so easily fooled.  So the US government is obviously one of those heads.  But one of the heads, though smaller, is the one that gets all the attention.  The head that was wounded unto death (the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the holocaust)  but is now alive and well upon the earth is the nation and government of Israel.  Small in stature, yet controlling most of the world, especially the US, beating down all opposition everywhere by using "the wound" as an accusation against any individual who would inquire into their deeds.  That wound is "the holocaust."  In Europe, if you ask a question about the wound, you go to prison.  In America, if you ask a question about the wound, everyone will avoid you from then on.
 
Watch carefully the podium at the Republican National Convention, especially as John McCain gives his acceptance speech.  Obama, of course, strode out of a Greek temple as Apollo, bearing the message of the gods.  Much thought and intent goes into the design of that podium, with strong input from the candidate who is "the chosen one."  It may be a plain podium this time, but it was not plain four years ago.
 
In 2004, George W. Bush stood before the podium to give his acceptance speech in his run for a second term.  He stood in the center of a very strongly colored, very visible, very satanic in every way, Pentagram.  All satanists everywhere understood the proclamation he was making.  "I serve Satan, and we are standing in triumph and victory."  The Christians, like foolish sheep, saw only the thin and sparse sheep skin that Bush wears, and rushed out to vote for him.
 
I say this to make one thing clear.  We are not waiting for the "endtimes" to come, we are in them.  We are not waiting for "The Antichrist"; Christians already serve the beast and do his will, working and fighting to see that he triumphs upon the earth. 
 
We are waiting, by the command of the gospel, for the grace, the power of Jesus inside of us, that will enable us to be, right here, right now, in this dark and hate-filled world, the full, victorious revelation of Jesus Christ. 
 
Are you called to that?  You can answer that question very simply.  Do you want it?  If you do, you are called.  Set your face upon that grace and He will come to you as well.
 
In the love of Jesus,