Diplomats of the world’s governments incessantly proclaim that the quest for peace is their primary mission. War tugs at the ends of the tether of restraint in an unrelenting rage to burst the bonds and destroy all within its devastating power. Peace is among the most elusive of all of mankind’s aspirations.
Historians have estimated that the number of wars throughout history exceeds fifteen thousand. But this figure was reported years ago and is likely far short of the true count. The fact is, so many conflicts could be listed as wars that the true number is impossible to ascertain. War at many levels continues to ignite in a never-ending profusion of carnage, bloodshed, and death.
Fear generated by the possibility of one’s own death resides at the heart of the term “war.” The word is used by politicians and by governments to try to unite mass numbers under their governance. Even though the conflict might not be against physical armies from other nations, to dramatically frame a problem that threatens the well-being of those being governed, leaders and officials use “war” to define the severity of the threat.
An example of this in America’s past is the Lyndon B. Johnson administration’s program to fight against what was built up to be the dire economic circumstances faced by the poor. That administration called the battle against the bad economic circumstances of the welfare class the “War on Poverty.” Through this, Johnson declared he would create the “Great Society.”
The government was, through this program coming on the heels of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, able to create a warlike campaign against the great enemy, as Johnson and his administration saw it. The true design of all of this, however, was to create bigger government and draw from American taxpayers more revenue to feed the ever-expanding bureaucracy of control. Some $22 trillion later, that mission was certainly accomplished.
The more recent example is the Donald J. Trump Administration’s “war” on the COVID-19, or coronavirus, pandemic. The president, with the best intentions for America’s welfare, and believing the doctors presented him the facts about numbers who might die from the virus, proclaimed in daily “Coronavirus Taskforce briefings” that America and the world were in a war against the unseen enemy. The virus was thought to bring as many as 2.2 million deaths in the US, according to the doctors assigned to update the administration on the pandemic.
This number never materialized or even came close. But, the powers that be caused the most powerful nation on earth and the most booming economy in history to be turned off in less than a couple of months as part of the “war” on the microbe-sized enemy.
As covered earlier, we saw how German Führer Adolf Hitler brought an entire nation and world into all-out war. The mesmerized people willingly followed him, even though they were war-weary from World War I and had suffered the loss of the majority of young, German manhood in the hellish conflict.
War to combat a deadly enemy is a fearful motivator. And it is a mighty tool to force the masses into the channels leadership want them funneled. Since the advent of the atomic bomb, then of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the terror of war has increased exponentially.
Death by nuclear fire is no more than thirty minutes away, no matter where we live within the continental United States. Nuclear weapons-equipped submarines lurk just off our coasts, their huge, sleek arrows of total destruction targeted by precision satellite and computers to hit American cities programmed for decimation.
With dictators having their fingers on the nuclear buttons and harboring a bloodlust against our nation, it has become understandable how the prophecy might be fulfilled:
And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. (Luke 21:25–26)
Since the invention of the hydrogen bomb, a number of reports over the years have said the world is coming close to the moment these weapons will be unleashed upon humanity. We of the age to remember lived through a time of worry over any-moment nuclear war. We recall the bomb shelters and the instructions when we were children to “duck and cover” in case of a siren warning that an attack was imminent. We were to dive off of our bikes or stop whatever we were doing and hit the ground, placing our heads between our arms and curling up in a fetal position. Or, we should find safety under a park bench or anything else available.
It’s ludicrous now to think that we could be protected against a multi-megaton nuclear bomb when entire islands in the South Pacific were completely dissolved in nuclear fire during the Bikini tests. But, such was the fear. It led to what we now consider irrational measures.
There have been several near-misses in tragedies from nuclear weaponry. Off America’s East Coast, a hydrogen bomb that was accidentally dropped but never ignited remains buried in the ocean depths. Crashes of other planes carrying nuclear weapons have been reported. In one instance, a huge bomb was found with only one element of several safeguards still intact that prevented its detonation.
Then, we think of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. All who were alive then and were old enough to remember recalled vividly the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States over nuclear-tipped weapons Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev had secretly placed in Fidel Castro’s Cuba just ninety miles off the tip of Florida. President John F. Kennedy confronted the Soviet leader, and the world came to the brink of World War III.
In all of these near-misses, we conclude that it was and continues to be God’s staying hand that has maintained control.
The prophetic Word of God foretells that a time is coming that will be even more fear-filled than back in those late 1950s, in 1962, and even to this day. The Scripture cited earlier tells part of what will make people’s hearts fail because of fear in that future time.
Jesus, Himself, said:
And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened. (Matthew 24:22)
We look around us today and see many things that are troubling—some tremendously troubling. The coronavirus, for example, came out of nowhere and immediately caused the most liberty-loving nation on the planet to throw aside most all liberty and freedom of movement. Lockdown of the nation seemed to have been put into effect with little pushback, and with little thought. The fear of death from COVID-19 was so great that the majority of Americans agreed to become like victims of a third-world dictatorship. As stated before, the most prosperous economy probably ever to exist came to a whimpering close in a matter of weeks. People were and continue to be afraid because of the “pandemic” foisted upon American citizenry.
We might sound a bit skeptical about the things attendant to this “pandemic.” That’s because we are, in fact, more than a bit skeptical.
At the very least, the whole matter smacks of contrivance. That is, it smells of perpetration by those who have for decades—especially for the four years following the 2016 presidential election—observably desired to force this nation into a globalist mold.
Such a thing will ultimately eventuate. The efforts of the globalist cabal, consisting of minions, both human and demonic, will bring about the global consortium of nations that will serve as platform for the Revelation 13 beast regime. Antichrist will at last have arrived to take his long-prophesied place of genocidal authority upon this judgment-bound planet.
Phony Peacemaker
The one who will someday demand that all on earth worship him or face the guillotine of his Fourth Reich will at first seem a benevolent leader who is universally loved and adored. His government will not initially be perceived as a dictatorship deadlier than all preceding despotic regimes.
But the pyroclastic outflow of this man of false peace will result in war. We see the Antichrist coming on the scene, then the explosion of evil that leads to the death of millions, even billions, in the Revelation 6 symbolic descriptive that encapsulates the apocalypse.
God’s overall forewarning of the Tribulation era, or “Daniel’s seventieth week,” begins with the coming forth of a rider on a white horse:
And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. (Revelation 6:1–2)
One of professional football’s most famous coaches, known for driving his players to exhaustion in practice in order to condition them for the last minutes of their games, said famously: “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Vince Lombardi, we think, meant that people, when exhausted, most often give in and don’t stand courageously to finish their mission. This, we can extrapolate, means that the exhausted will be filled with fears created by their feelings of inability to continue—and they’ll give up.
Further, people, history has shown, will call on those who show great determination and strength to protect them and take care of their own failed attempts at accomplishing life’s hard-to-reach goals. Like in the case of Germany during the late 1920s and the 1930s, troublous times bring forth strong-willed personalities. These, because of man’s fallen nature, are most often of the dictatorial sort. The Nazi regime and the Third Reich were the result of the exhausted Germans’ acquiescence to the Führer’s deceptively presented promises of return to peace and prosperity.
Adolf Hitler, as we’ve examined, was post World War I’s strong man who took full advantage of the weaknesses caused by the war and the economic depression that followed. The soon-to-come rider on the white steed will be even more deceptive than Hitler and his henchmen. Antichrist will harbor unprecedented hatred for humanity and will exhibit through his deadly actions the exercise of evil powers beyond that possessed by all tyrants of history combined.
There is an even greater force active today than the one behind the man who will emerge as depicted in the first horseman of the Apocalypse. This force is, even at this moment, holding back that horseman. Antichrist and all the carnage he will bring with him following his deceptive entrance into world history as the greatest “peacemaker” of all time cannot emerge until allowed to do so. We learn of this in the following passage (we’ve have inserted the meanings of relevant words in brackets).
Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day [Tribulation] shall not come, except there come a falling away [departure] first, and that man of sin [Antichrist] be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth [restrains] that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he [God the Holy Spirit] who now letteth [restrains] will let [restrain], until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked [Antichrist and his evil] be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. (2 Thessalonians 2:3–8)
Man of Sin Revealed
Antichrist is most frequently referred to as a specific man foretold to be history’s last and most terrible dictator; he will rule the world just before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The term “antichrist” has two meanings, basically: 1) that which is against Christ; and 2) that which counterfeits and/or takes the place of Christ. The word is mentioned specifically only in the following passages of the Bible (emphasis added):
Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. (1 John 2:18)
Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. (1 John 2:22)
And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that [spirit] of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. (1 John 4:3)
For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. (2 John 1:7)
The future world leader who will be Antichrist is also called by other names in Bible prophecy: “the little horn” (Daniel 7:8); “the king of fierce countenance” (Daniel 8:23); “the prince that shall come” (Daniel 9:26); “the king” (Daniel 11:36); “the man of sin” (2 Thessalonians 2:3); “the son of perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2:3); “the beast” (Revelation 13:1–4, 12, 14–15, 17; 19:19–20); and “six hundred threescore and six” (Revelation 13:18).
Prophecy writer/broadcaster Daymond Duck writes the following about the one who is also called “the lawless one”:
Most scholars agree that John’s usage of the word [Antichrist] implies two different meanings: 1) against the Christ, and 2) instead of the Christ. Both meanings fit the final führer. The antichrist will be against the Christ; that is, he will be an enemy of the Christ, and he will try to replace the Christ; that is, he will be a false Christ.
Daniel revealed the final fuhrer’s opposition to the Christ when he said the antichrist will “stand up against the Prince of princes” (Daniel 8:25). And Paul revealed the evil one’s effort to replace the Christ when he said the antichrist will sit in the Temple as God “shewing himself that he is God” (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 4). Many people have opposed Christ, but other than Satan, there has never been a more sinister or worthy opponent on the face of planet earth.[i]
Many false Christs have arisen, and some have been noteworthy imposters, but there has never been a greater or more evil deceiver than this one.
