As of 10/21/2010
The news is relatively quiet coming from the Middle East. Those who base their hopefulness on the day-to-day vicissitudes of the peace process, or who search the news media for minutiae that might be relevant, are inevitably discouraged when things do not seem to be going well. When this happens, the saints can find renewed hope if they zoom their perspectives out a bit, to cover a longer period of time, to see the whole structure of the peace process rather than the momentary details.
It is important also to note that it is when things are the quietest, that the most important parts of the process are being developed behind the scenes; the strategies for dealing with a public that has been trained to war, and not toward peace. These are the days when the high and lower officials from both sides confer and negotiate. The machinations of both sides are hidden from public view for the most part. Everything that is released to the press is for domestic consumption, in order to manipulate the whole population, to cause their constituents to actually desire whatever the government is selling. The press reveals what the government feeds it.
As it is on a national level, so also is it on a personal level. We sell ideas, concepts, paradigms of life. We wear our public personas like masks, hiding the real person behind the eyes. Outwardly, we may be meek and unassuming, but inside each of us is that terrible old nature, and the battle is unrelenting between the old man and the new man. There is a ravening monster in everyone, who desires its own, and subtly seeks its will.
For the unsaved, that is all there is, but for the saint, there is the indwelling Spirit of God. That monster inside us drives us apart from fellowship with the great Creator God and draws our attention to the things of this world. The same is as true of civilizations as it is of individuals, for all nations are made up of individual citizens. All can be manipulated. There has never been a nation that did not engage in some form of Machiavellianism; even before Nicolo Machiavelli was born. He simply gave utterance to what has always been in the hearts of those who rule.
Israel has just announced plans for another six hundred homes in East Jerusalem. This is seen by the Gentile nations as a sort of thumbing of the nose at those who would coerce Israel into a peace that they do not want. Domestically, it gives the Jews some satisfaction to see their government standing up against the whole world. It will make capitulation easier when it happens, as it must. For the Scriptures declare it.
Nationalism rises to the surface, and that is when the government can most easily sway the populace. It is a given that Israel will control at least a part of Jerusalem in any deal that is struck, for there will be temple sacrifices during the tribulation. Today, the Gentile nations together do not recognize Israel’s annexed land, either in Jerusalem, Gaza, or the West Bank. Those settlements are, according to international law, illegal. Israel is building on land that she knows she will receive in the final accord. Otherwise, she would be building everywhere. She is building neighborhoods and settlements that she will be easily persuaded to tear down. She is stacking up her chips in the great gamble of the ages, and will “lose” only that which she built in order to be able to bargain without surrendering that which she desires to keep. Israel is building some settlements for the very purpose of destroying them, in order to make the Arabs in and around Palestine believe that Israel has conceded that which she wanted to keep. The Jews are smarter than that. They are building their concessions right now.
It seems that all the nations of the world have assumed a Machiavellian wickedness, justifying whatever they wish to do by painting their adversaries as evil and their friends as good. Fear is the currency of success in politics, no matter the system of government. Just as there are no good men, so are there also no good nations. Every one of them, including our own, which is devised by fallen men, and is so fashioned according to the Constitution as to provide complete freedom to all manner of hedonism and vice. Freedom from religion.
That is something that the religious right in this country hates to discuss. If we are a Christian nation, then we ought not allow anything that is not of God. Nevertheless, our Constitution does indeed grant such liberties to every citizen. We hate it, but it is a simple fact. Politicians pander to their constituencies with promises to root out the corruption and vice, when they are themselves corrupted by the very process they promise to clean up. The political right does not want abortion and homosexuality to go away. It would rob them of their best and most effective talking points. The devil is going to rub our faces in it until we learn that our nation is as corrupt and vile as Sodom and Gomorrah; that we allow pornography to be broadcast through the air we breathe, into our own homes. No, we need not watch it, or even fight against it, but it is a filth in our system that we lack the power to resist. Even the very best that man can devise is corrupt and ugly if one peels away the veneer of money and manners.
The devil is still the ruler of this world. All of its systems of governance, and all of its economic structures, are his. He has moved men to create deceptions, and wonders and glories aplenty. While the United States of America is the finest and the richest and fairest government and economy ever devised by man, it is also one that is based upon the love of money, robbing the poor in order to gain favor with the rich. Moral issues are not reflected in our laws, but only that which the Constitution permits. As it turns out, it permits almost anything at all.
The oppression of Israel’s poor was one of the primary reasons why God allowed Sennacherib to carry the northern ten tribes captive in 722 B.C. The same is true of Judah, when Nebuchadnezzar carried Judah into captivity in 586 B.C. Man has yet to devise an equitable economic structure or government that is either righteous or wise. Always, on the left is deregulation of the individual; and on the right, the deregulation of the economic powerhouses. The tension between the two is palpable. There is a great struggle going on between the two in the U.S., but the struggle is greater in Israel. What is true here is also true everywhere. For the leader of the world today is Satan himself. That is a hard pill for most Christians to swallow. But he is the one who creates discord and anger and greed. Yet, man cannot say, “The devil made me do it,” because we are each responsible for the choices that we make.
In Israel, the devil is causing the hearts of the people to tire of war, even though there are groups who are adamantly opposed to any surrender of land that God gave to Abraham. Anger leads to heart attacks and every sort of misery. Commerce leads to wealth and plenty. It will not be difficult domestically if Israel tears down some settlements while building elsewhere. The settlements that she keeps will be those that mean the most to her.
New housing was announced yesterday, and the ice was already melting thin under Israel’s place in the world, even as the temper of the world grows warm against her. God would defend her if she turned to Him, but we know that she will not do that until after the tribulation, when our Lord returns to Jerusalem, not to be crucified again, but to rule over all the kings of the earth. And we know that there will be a peace treaty that begins the tribulation, the last of Daniel’s seventy weeks of years, the time of Jacob’s trouble.
When we step back farther yet from the small details, and we see the progress that has been made in the past forty years. Before then, Israel was in a constant state of war with every one of her neighbors. She was a pariah, an interloper.
The peace process has moved slowly; diplomacy almost always moves at glacial speed, but consider the progress that has been made toward a peaceful conclusion in only the past three or four years. In the last decade, the Arab nations have accepted that Israel is a legitimate state, and is urging the Palestinians to find some middle ground by which an agreement can be made, saving face for both sides. They have not actually spoken the words recognizing Israel, but the fact that they are urging progress toward peace proves that they consider Israel a sovereign state with whom one can negotiate in good faith.
To the Gentile nations, Israel is throwing up barriers to peace. The truth is, both sides are taking actions that work against the process of peacemaking. Both sides understand that things must be said for domestic consumption, and both sides are expected to make public protests, but the framework is probably already on the table. There has to be some time frame in which public opinion must be turned. Working against that are groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
The problem that both face is that the changing of a people from enemies into friends must be done gradually. There are always many roadblocks on the pathways toward peace. This group or that, in every nation, will make public protests, and they will feel good about themselves for a time, but the governments will do what they will to do.
The only “will” that matters is God’s, and it will be done. That too is a process, not an event, though many events will occur in the outworking of God’s will and purposes during the dark days before the Second Advent. When Jesus Christ establishes His throne in Jerusalem, His will shall be fulfilled in every particular. Until then, we are fallen creatures living on a cursed earth in a cursed universe. Jesus will lift that curse when He takes the throne.
As Christians, we pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, but our spirits remind us that it will not be so until the Kingdom Age. The Kingdom age could be as little as seven years from this very moment. We pray, “Thy kingdom come,” but our hearts turn immediately to earthly things when we have finished our prayers. And are we not truly depraved?
The true Church does not await a peace treaty in the Middle East. We await our Lord and our Groom, as He calls us up from the earth into heaven itself, where He presents His bride the mansions that He has built for each of us.
The rapture could occur months before a treaty has even been presented. We do not need to be on the earth until the very moment of the signing of the treaty. The Church Age began in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, when our Lord revealed the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. But the Church itself was not created until months later, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples during the Jewish feast of Pentecost. The Church Age will end when the last saint is added to the body of Christ. With no further reason to leave us on the earth, we will be removed. It could be years before a treaty is agreed upon in the Middle East.
The rapture has always had the quality of imminence – that the rapture can occur at any moment. If the Church Age had been completed in, say, A.D.1544, then the world would have continued along through time until it reached its present state, where the objective circumstances on the ground match the words of the prophets.
There are always a minimum of one thousand seven years, plus seventy-five days, before the end of the world; until the signing of that treaty. Then the days will be diminished by one day every day. Those last days will begin with the signing of a seven-year treaty between Israel and ‘many.” Actually, every continent’s populations will be represented in that treaty, if only through the auspices of the United Nations, which is already a participating member of the Quartet: The United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. That is to say, the entire Gentile world is demanding that Israel recognize the statehood of Palestine, not only to end the war, but to build the peace and prosperity for all.
The Church need not be here to watch those prophecies unfold. The time between the rapture and the beginning of the tribulation is not made clear in the Scriptures. Most conservative expositors place the rapture shortly before the treaty signing. One thing is certain: The Church, the body of Christ, His bride, will be translated into beings capable of living in a heaven of which we cannot conceive before that treaty is agreed upon. The closer the Middle East comes to an agreement, the nearer the rapture must be. For it occurs before that treaty is made.
What then? If we see that the process is toward peace, even haltingly, we can take heart. Consider also that, if we can see clearly that the things that are to be on the earth after the rapture are taking shape already in the world, then we can understand that the times and the seasons truly are upon us. And if that is so, then is it not incumbent upon all of the living Church Age saints to be lifting up and building up the hope of the saints?
Hope is the forgotten virtue, yet it is as vital to a healthy spiritual life as either faith or love, though the greatest virtue is love. If something that is to happen, perhaps months or years, or perhaps a split second, after the rapture is unfolding already, and in an accelerating pace worldwide, then ought we not expect, moment-by-moment, to see a Door opened in heaven and the Lord descending with the sound of the trumpet and a voice shouting, “Come up here!”
Education without application is entertainment. If these essays and updates do not evoke the certain knowledge in us that the times and the seasons are upon us, then we ought to reevaluate our priorities and reorder our understanding.
God tests our faith, and the devil tries to divert us, to direct us onto paths that we ought not travel. More often than not, we follow after our temporal goals and desires, giving no thought to the fact that God Himself has chosen us and made each and every saint a minister of the word of reconciliation.
If our theologians believe that the end times are upon us, then why are they waiting for the United States to collapse and for some other entity to rise to be the nation of the beast? If these are the end times, and if we find the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, being led by a man whom the world adores – if we find this man determined to make peace in the Middle East, well, what should our application be in our own lives and ministries?
As always, let me add this disclaimer, that I do not claim that President Obama is the antichrist. In no way would I ever make that some sort of dogma. Any president who finally reaches an accord in the Middle East will prove to be the antichrist, even if it is five hundred presidents down the line. And that, only if the U.S. strongly continues on its present course with reference to Israel and God’s land. Obama could be the antichrist, but he also could not be. Whether it is this president or the next or the next, it will be the primary broker of Middle East peace that is the antichrist, whether he is an American or the leader of some Western European nation, or perhaps a leader from one of the Mediterranean states. Some believe that the antichrist is not a person, but a political entity. The consistent use of the masculine personal pronoun to refer to this individual cannot be tossed aside.
If the Scriptures, particularly the prophets, are read in a normal way, using language in an ordinary fashion, then one can only arrive at this conclusion. Those who are hanging onto an interpretation that they learned in school need to let go and understand the importance of the times in which we live. These are indeed the end times, and we are very likely walking in the very last of the very last days of this age. Do not be discouraged by passing problems along the way.
In conclusion, note that we are not waiting for the antichrist to be revealed; we are waiting for our heavenly inheritance to be revealed at the judgment seat of Christ. If we see that which is to follow our departure already building toward a climax on the earth, then we can face each day with the virtue of hope shining brightly upon our ministries toward others – the word of reconciliation to the lost, and the word of edification to the saints. Let us be found serving God when our Lord comes for His bride!
