one world religion

jesus, moth, one world religion, pope benedict, pope francis, schism

Too Many Popes Spoil the Vatican: Is there a Catholic Schism Looming?

Posted on November 3, 2014May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

Left, Pope Benedict (Emeritus) and Right, Pope Francis (Current)

On February 11, 2013, it was announced that Pope Benedict XVI was resigning his position as Pope. No pope had resigned in 600 years and only 5 of the 266 popes, including Benedict, have ever resigned. I wrote about it here, quoting a news article:

Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world and left the Catholic church reeling when he said on Monday that he would resign – the first pope to do so since the middle ages. The move, announced without warning, will take place on 28 February and leave the papacy vacant until a successor is chosen

That successor is Pope Francis. He ascended the papal monarchy on March 13, 2013.

Since then, Francis has garnered worldwide praise for his personal touch, his winning smile, his emphasis on the poor, and … his liberal views.

The Vatican & Cardinals are less impressed. The Daily Beast published an interesting article today. It’s titled,

Is the Pope Catholic? Critics Rally Around Benedict As Talk of Schism Looms

Almost from the beginning, there have been rumblings of discontent about Pope Francis. While the world’s media fell in love with him, there were more conservative bishops who felt that Francis’s popular appeal came at the expense of carefully worked-out Church rituals and teachings. They saw Francis as chipping away at established Church teachings on sexuality, kowtowing to the liberal media, and acting aggressively towards conservative church leaders. Criticism of Francis has come to a head with the publication of the final report of the Synod on the Family. Despite changing absolutely nothing doctrinally, the Synod’s recommendations for a more understanding attitude to those in unconventional family arrangements have ignited a firestorm of controversy among conservative commentators. The possibility that Catholics who had divorced and remarried without receiving an annulment might be readmitted into full communion with the Church has made many apoplectic.

In his short 18-month tenure, Pope Francis has seemed to have softened the traditional Catholic stance on homosexuals, has signaled a review of the traditional Catholic stance on female clerics and priests, noted that the traditional position of celibacy of priests can change, shifted a long-held stance on evolution and Big Bang, and now this week’s seeming change of stance on divorce. The Cardinals have had enough, and looking around, they notice that there’s another pope in town. One who was very conservative and is looking pretty good to them right now.

Pope Emeritus Benedict.

But there’s a reason to pay attention to this particular breed of shrill complaint: there’s more than one Pope in town. Much like an ex-partner you keep running into in the street, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s continued presence in the church serves as a constant reminder of the way things used to be.
…
Benedict is hanging back for now, but there’s no doubt that he could easily become a figurehead for traditionalists harkening back to the good old days. In some ways, he already has. In somewhat ominous tones that have rightly been called threatening, Douthat exclaims to his “true Catholic” audience, “Remember there is another pope still living!” Having warned that Pope Francis and the Synod are leading us towards schism, does Douthat mean to imply that “true Catholics” will or should stage a coup?

The longest continuous monarchy in the world is generally accepted to be Japan’s, founded around 600BC. The Vatican records the first pope as Apostle Peter (which we know is false) but their chronological list of popes extends from Peter’s time to now with Francis, 266 in all. By that standard they are considered the second oldest monarchy in the world, and Denmark is third, founded in 935 AD.

A schism in the Vatican between liberal Francis and conservative emeritus Benedict could be very interesting. To fracture the long held power and remove the stranglehold the Vatican has on billions of false Christians known as Catholics would indeed be earth-shattering.

One does not know what the Lord is doing or will do, apart from what is recorded in the bible, but the mind reels with possibilities of how the final one-world religion predicted in Revelation 12-13 could come about.

I am reminded of a prophecy made in Hosea 5:12. The LORD promised this:

But I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house of Judah.

Pulpit Commentary explains, “The meaning of the prophet is by no means obscure, and that is, that the Lord would by a slow corrosion consume both the people; and that, though he would not by one onset destroy them, yet they would pine away until they became wholly rotten.” The two agents of destruction here named – the moth which eats away clothes, and the woodworm which gnaws away wood – figuratively represent slow but sure destruction.”

Moths work secretly, unknowingly to the clothes owner. All one knows is that when the garment is needed, it will be full of holes and unwearable. The woodworm has been secretly gnawing out the wood and suddenly one day the ship sinks, or the building topples.

Has the Lord been working as a moth, secretly eating away at the foundations of this false religion?

We do know for sure that one day the evil false religion of harlot Babylon will fall! (Revelation 17) During the Tribulation, all peoples will worship the Beast (Rev 13:15-16) except for Christians, who will be killed for refusing.

These are exciting times to be living in, and we are grateful to the Lord for placing us here, now, to observe His mighty works and the end of all things. I believe the end is at hand, for many reasons, but one major indicator in my opinion is the collapse of Cultural Christianity and the wide apostasy infecting the church.

We watch in awe of the Lord at work in these tumultuous times. As Timothy Larsen said in his excellent essay Cheerful Confidence after Christendom,

THANK GOD FOR GRANTING US NOW

God has granted me the privilege to live now—in my own times. To wish otherwise is not only pointless, it is ungrateful. It is also self-defeating. Every season of life has its own joys. Foolishness is to want to have the joys of adulthood when still a teenager or the joys of adolescence when middle aged and so on. Likewise, there are unique joys, privileges, and opportunities for serving God in each generation. We are called not to hanker after a different age, but rather to jump in with relish to following Christ at this moment.

And if the Lord sees fit to hugely shake Catholics to their core by creating a schism, perhaps making room in unconverted hearts for true Christianity to enter, is that not cause for celebration? Oh, to see hearts aligned with an antichrist in the form of a pope, minds blinded to the simplicity and beauty of the Gospel, tongues praying to Mary, spirits convulsed with doubt as their seeming foundation is revealed moth-eaten and worm-gobbled, converted to Jesus. A cause for celebration indeed. Peter is not the rock upon which the faith is built. The Rock is Jesus.

No matter what, the Lord is mighty, and He is always at work. Praise Him for His perfection in all He does.

This God—his way is perfect;
the word of the Lord proves true;
he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.
31For who is God, but the Lord?
And who is a rock, except our God?—
(Psalm 18:30-31)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Antichrist will easily co-opt today’s technology for the prophesied purposes

Posted on January 20, 2014May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

It is very easy for me to see how the antichrist will control the world. He is prophesied to be a man who will come in peace uttering flatteries, (Daniel 8:25, Daniel 11:32) but instead will reveal his evil at the Abomination of Desolation. He is called the man of sin (2 Thessalonians 2:3) because he will be the embodiment of all that is most thoroughly evil.

EPrata photo

We are born depraved. Every person is born with evil in them as our sin nature controls us. But not all of us do the worst evil that can be done. There are some nice people who try to do good in philanthropy or by religious works. Rocker Bono is known as the former and ‘Mother’ Theresa was known as the latter. This is not to say that they don’t or didn’t have a heart of evil, only that unconverted people with a sin nature CAN do good, it’s just not the kind of good that Jesus accepts as good. (Romans 3:10-12; Psalm 14:1-3; Psalm 53:1-3). Hitler was an example of how far along the ‘evil spectrum’ a man can go, but even Hitler didn’t come near to plumbing to the bottom of the evil that a man can do. The antichrist will be that man. This surprises many to think there can be a worse man than Hitler, but it is no surprise to Jesus, for He knows what is in a man. (John 2:25)

The coming antichrist will rule every aspect of the left behind people’s lives. In the geo-political realm, he will

rule the whole world, all peoples, nations, tongues, tribes.(Daniel 2:40, Revelation 13:7-8). The only nation that is prophesied to escape the antichrist’s hand will be Jordan. (Daniel 11:41). It is no coincidence that this is where Jesus urged the people to run when the Abomination of Desolation occurs and where the remnant will be personally protected during the Tribulation. It will be the location of the conversion of Israel. (Matthew 24:16, Isaiah 63:1, Revelation 12:6, Zechariah 12:10).

The antichrist will perform evil upon evil. His second in command in this unholy trinity will be the false prophet, who will cause all to have a mark on their hand or forehead which will be a mark of worship to the antichrist, identifying the person as allied with him (allied with evil). Without this mark no one may buy or sell. In other words, worship the antichrist or you may not participate in any way in the economy. It will be worship or die.

In the economic realm, by his henchman the False Prophet, antichrist will rule all people’s buying and selling, as mentioned previously. (Revelation 13:16-17). They will control the economy.

Glen Benton, metal musician

In the religious realm, he will rule also. He wants to be worshiped and his goal is to exalt himself. After the six-day creation was completed, Satan influenced the holy angels to come to his side. A third of them did. (Hebrews 12:22). Then after God made man, satan came right down and turned their eyes away from God and Adam and Eve disobeyed. They were cursed and ejected from the garden. This has been satan’s desire for a long time- to oppose God and to corrupt man. (Isaiah 14:13-14).

For millennia, people have wondered HOW the antichrist could possibly control the entire world. It seemed well-nigh impossible for one man to be able to keep track of the entire population’s economic purchases, religious worship, and political movements. It was the cause for marveling and many discussions, I am sure.

Even in my lifetime it seemed impossible to us with finite minds and no understanding of God’s plan. I was born in 1960 and by 1983 I was married. That was back before video machines replayed movies in your home. Before widespread Cable TV. Even at that, cable tv wasn’t 24 hours. Before GPS. It was prior to cell phones, webcams, the internet. Even the simple bar code was fairly new. I wasn’t saved then but if I had been I’d be one of those wondering heartily just how all that is prophesied will come together.

God is always working. Even long ago, He was causing inventions to be made that would inexorably bring the unbelieving human race under subjection of one man at the end of time, and who would employ the technology of the era to continue that subjection until his appointed days came about.

In 1991 my husband and I bought a sailboat and we moved onto it and determined to sail the east coast of the US, and cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. There, we planned to laze about, see the sights, and live intimately connected with the earth. My anticipation was the latter but my husband’s overarching goal was to escape government intrusion.

Intracoastal , Hollywood, FL, by kimb0lene flickr CC

Even in the early ’90s, the rules and regulations for daily living via zoning, vehicular laws, taxes etc tortured his libertarian heart. So we decided to get away from it all and cut loose from regular living and craft a lifestyle that would be apart from government rules and prying as much as possible.

Ha ha.

Little did we know in our innocent and naive hearts that government tentacles had been busy extending invisibly into areas we knew not. For example, we didn’t know that the Atlantic coastal waters and the inside Intracoastal Waterway were heavily trafficked and monitored. We expected the Coast Guard. We did not expect that the Coast Guard could approach and board without probable cause and with impunity. Unlike motorists where law enforcement needs a valid reason and/or permission to search your vehicle, it is not the case with Coast Guard. (At least, at that time.) They come aboard, inspect for safety gear, and can and did search for drugs (Ah, that old War on Drugs was going full force in the post Miami Vice ’90s).

Also, we did not expect that every bridge tender to record the name and home port of each vessel traveling under its spans.

For example, here is the Bridge of Lions at the port of St. Augustine. When a sailboat wants to go under the bridge and if the span is lower than the boat’s mast, you call the bridge tender and request he lifts the span to allow passage. This, of course, halts car traffic on the bridge. When you pass under the tender’s booth, much like a highway tollbooth, he writes down the name of your boat and the port identified on the stern.

Kristee Booth, Wiki CC photo

If we had thought about it at all, we would have understood from the get-go that the coastal waters and Intracoastal Waterway has to have separation of traffic much like roadways. There are cargo ships, Navy ships, pleasure craft, fishing fleets, Coast Guard, marina harbormasters, yacht races, locks, bridges, canals, rules of the road, and much more. Because it is so busy, of course it would all be managed.

Another trip we took was in a VW camper van across the country. This was in 1994. We were interested in exploring the desert. Neither of us had been west of the Mississippi and we were specifically looking forward to exploring the desert. We had a vague notion of finding a warm place to buy a small plot of land and build a desert shack. The expanses of West Texas entranced us. It was so empty! Maybe this would be the place we could set up a home apart from so much spying, from government and neighbors, my husband said. He was truly born in the wrong time. I believe in former days he would have made a great schooner captain or an inventive Mountain Man.

Anyway, we kept seeing this weird dirigible hovering over the desert byways. We learned that its name was Fat Albert and it was a government spy craft.

EPrata photo

This is the official write up on it:
“The Tethered Aerostat Radar System is a balloon-borne radar. The primary aerostat mission is to provide radar data in support of other federal agencies involved in the nation’s drug interdiction program. One aerostat, located at Cudjoe Key, Fla., transmits TV Marti, which sends American television signals into Cuba for the U.S. Information Agency. The air drug interdiction program consists of land-based aerostat radar detection balloons along the U.S. southern border and in the Carribbean…“

What happened was the balloons went up in FL first to monitor drug traffic by air and sea, but the smugglers simply shifted their air routes west and flew over Mexico and then landed in the United States Southwest. So the program shifted west to follow them. The write-up states plainly that the Marti transmissions were a failure and the balloons were a semi-failure, due to expense, necessity to remain tethered, and bad weather. But the government kept trying and spying, bless their hearts.

Of course we are into the second decade of the new millennium now and we know that the government spying that used to look outward for enemies and drug traffickers now looks inward to track friendly, unsuspecting citizens and their activities, not just enemies.

The National Security Agency collects over 2 million private citizens’ messages a day in ‘untargeted sweeps’. Highway webcameras are ubiquitous. There is a street cam on every ATM and bank, and on traffic lights and most businesses. The government can track a person with a cell phone and the phone need not be on an active call, or even turned on for that matter. As this story below illustrates, continuing societal immorality extends to citizens using technology to spy on citizens more frequently than not.

Marcus Thomas, former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division in Quantico, said in a recent story in The Washington Post that the FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer’s camera — without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording — for several years. (source). Thsi same story reported how a teen aged classmate had been spying on Miss Teen USA by using her webcam. The activation of the unsuspecting girl’s webcam hadn’t triggered the light that alerted her that the camera was in use.

We can see how Jesus’s prophecy in Matthew 10:21 will easily come true, if laptop spying can occur between citizen-to-citizen. Even family members will spy and tell. “Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death.“

All this to say that in my lifetime, visible technology has leaped forward to such a degree that envisioning the antichrist’s stranglehold on all peoples at end of the end is now easy to do. That the people using technology have been revealed to have regularly used it for nefarious purposes shows us how easily a depraved man’s heart can and does turn what was meant for citizen good will be used instead to oppress them.

As for the antichrist’s and false prophet’s stranglehold on religion, in looking at this one picture it is easy to see how the world’s religions will cave easily and be absorbed into one. Most is it is false now anyway.

As Pastor JD Hall said of this photo as he tweeted it, “Photo of a female Methodist pastor anointing a Catholic Cardinal. So much #fail in one photo.”

HuffPo

The Huffington Post reports, “Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley surprised many people when he asked Rev. Robertson, a pastor in the United Methodist Church, to anoint his forehead with consecrated water in an ecumenical baptism reaffirmation ritual at Sudbury United Methodist Church, reports The Patriot Ledger. “

To see where we are headed, read the bible. It contains already-ordained future history. To see how close we are to that future, look back. In my case, I didn’t have to look back too distantly to see how far we have come in being subject to technological and governmental strangleholds and how the tares have flooded the faith. Only 30 years. What does the next 30 years portend? The next 5years? The next one year? I shudder to think.

However, the grace and promise of Jesus is that His Bride is not appointed to wrath. We who are already in the Bride will not be here to be forcibly subjugated to the antichrist, nor forced to starve when we are forbidden to participate in the economy. We will be in heaven dining with our Groom at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb! That is a sure thing.

If you do not know Jesus and are worried about the way the world is going, you are right to be afraid. It will end in a horror that Jesus Himself shuddered to relate to the disciples. (Matthew 24:21-22). It will be Hitler’s Holocaust on steroids, a never-ending shop of horrors and literally hell on earth. (Revelation 9:2-3). Billions will die. And then after the Great White Throne Judgment they will die again, forever, in hell, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. (Mark 9:38).

Flickr CC by stonehouse_ “jayme and i wrote this in the wet pavement.
apparently it had been cleaned when jayme when back later though.
the heathens will never be…”

You can avoid all that by repenting of your sins and appealing to Jesus for forgiveness. Because He absorbed God’s wrath on the cross for our sins, died, and rose again, He is able to forgive, and your wrath will be transferred from your account to His. He paid your sin-debt! He is magnificent and holy, loving and gracious. He is waiting for you to recognize you are a sinner and fall to His feet. He will forgive you, lift you, conform you to His likeness (holy and good) and welcome you to blessed heaven when it is your turn to be called home. All this awaits the repentant sinner!

“…Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 14b-15).

chrislam, one world religion, pope francis, rick warren, vatican

The coming one world religion

Posted on June 8, 2013May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

In the Tribulation, the final 7-year period when the church is removed and Jesus rains down His wrath upon an unbelieving world, there will be one final religion. Revelation 18 describes the demise of it. Prior to its prophesied destruction, it had been an ongoing one-world-religion system.

Kev Walker

The antichrist co-opted religion in Revelation 13:15-17 by announcing himself as the head of it and causing all to take a mark of worship in allegiance to him. But before that happens at the midpoint of the Tribulation, it seems that religion without antichrist as the head of it will flourish as well.

Paul wrote to Timothy that in the last days people will have an appearance of Godliness but denying its power. (2 Timothy 3:5). It is going to be an apostate time but not one devoid of religions, the appearance of the final false religion in Revelation 18 shows us that.

As a matter of fact, in the verses preceding 2 Timothy 3:5 we read, “For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,” and those people could be described as adherents to any religion today that doesn’t have Jesus as its head.

Matthew 24:23-24 also shows that there will be a thriving religion business during the first part of the Tribulation. Jesus told the disciples, “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”

Even though all of the above verses apply to the entire time of the last days- which are the ascension of Christ after Pentecost (Acts 1:9) and the descent of Christ at the battle of Armageddon (Zechariah 14:3-4, Revelation 19:15), they can be applied in force during the Tribulation because that is the culmination of all the foregoing years.

Think of the apostasy & false religions during the Tribulation as a tsunami wave. Out on the sea it is

Photo: NOAA

inches tall and hard to spot because the action is mostly under the surface. As it progresses along the ocean it nears the shore, and as it does, it becomes more ferocious, dangerous, and destructive. It deepens, rears up, and crashes down upon the land. That is the picture of apostasy in the last days, piling up as the Tribulation nears and reaches its destructive crescendo during the final 7 years.

After the rapture, the antichrist fools everyone at first by coming across as a man of peace-politically and spiritually. The prophecy in Daniel 9:27 says he confirms a covenant with many people, and the political and religious are bound in one sentence.

If true Christians are raptured, leaving Mormons, Catholics, Muslims, Hindi, etc, that still leaves a lot of people practicing some sort of faith (false faith.)

Though the table above lumps all Christians together, remember that “Christian” for statistical purposes is comprised of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics (false religion) the 300 million Eastern Orthodox Church, (false) and Protestant, (and many of Protestants will be left behind, having been shown to be false. Matthew 7:21-23 Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.) The actual size of the true church is really very small.

So all those billions will be left behind. A great many people practicing some sort of faith will be seeking answers to questions as to where the Born Again people went and why the world seems to be crumbling. Billions of people aren’t going to suddenly abandon their faith, but they will be seeking answers. After all, their gods will have been unable to cope with the devastating events happening. Initially, the antichrist will play on those fears and nerves by seeming to have the answers, and likely will use his verbal skills and intelligence to promote a faith that has elements of all religions in them, in order to salve the people’s fears and calm their seeking hearts. They’ll buy it.

This happened before. When Nero watched while Rome burned, people at first thought Nero had set the fire that destroyed their city, homes, and temples. They began to rise up. What Nero did was cleverly play on their fears by deliberately misdirecting them: he said the Christians did it.

Robert Hubert, Great Fire of Rome, 1795

After the fire, “The Romans were totally devastated. Their culture, in a sense, went down with the city. All the religious elements of their life were destroyed—their great temples, shrines, and even their household idols were burned up. This had great religious implications because it made them believe that their deities had been unable to deal with this conflagration and were also victims of it. The people were homeless and hopeless. Many had been killed. Their bitter resentment was severe, so Nero realized that he had to redirect the hostility.” (source)

The old adage goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. When events occur in the Tribulation similar to the ones that happened in Rome in 64AD (but on a global scale instead of a city-wide scale) religious divisions will be smoothed over. The antichrist will be blaming the Christians and/or Jews for the world’s faults, likely saying that is why they were taken away.

The antichrist will be a flatterer, will destroy by craft, will be a smooth talker, (Daniel 8:25, Daniel 11:32). It not too hard to see how he will be able to bamboozle the people into accepting that all their religions are really pretty close in doctrine, and they all need to pull together during this difficult time… he will be all things to all people and when the time comes at the mid-point of the Tribulation and the antichrist says, ‘worship me’, they will. On a smaller scale, think of how Obama appeared to be a messiah or a savior to large swathes of extremely different people who seemed to have nothing in common. In his second campaign, he turned from building large coalitions among disparate groups, to having a pointillist approach, micro-targeting individual demographics and playing them against each other. Either way, he won both times.

And that is because all the false religions ARE close in doctrine. Ice cream is ice cream, no matter if

you eat chocolate or strawberry. It’s still ice cream. Same with false religion. It is all headed up by satan, and all works-based, so it’s all the same, really. After all, don’t the three biggies even worship the same God? That is how they will see it, in my opinion.

Cut to today. I think the final religion already has begun. The seeming wide gaps between Islam and Judaism and Catholicism are shrinking. I see this shrinking enacted in the push for the “three main monotheistic religions” to get together, tolerate each other, find commonalities, and do works together. I think the second-to-final religion will be a combination of all of them. Other religions will suddenly find commonalities, and usefulness in doing works together. (Mormonism, Buddhism, etc).

At first this seems counterintuitive, as in, how can such two different religions such as RCC and Islam, combine to form one? But we keep hearing ‘we share one God’, Islam mentions Abraham and Jesus, Islam venerates Mary, the Pope has recently said that all people go to heaven and so the anathema thing for the last 1500 years of anyone but a Catholic going there (CCC 816) seems to be suddenly over … It’s happening now and it’s happening fast. Look at the following news-

Muslim envoy asks Pope Francis to take ‘step forward’
An envoy from Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning, Al-Azhar in Cairo, raised the prospect of restoring

ties with the Vatican on Friday but called on Pope Francis to take “a step forward” by declaring that Islam is a peaceful religion. “The problems that we had were not with the Vatican but with the former pope. Now the doors of Al-Azhar are open,” Mahmoud Abdel Gawad, diplomatic envoy to the grand imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb, told Italian daily Il Messaggero in Cairo. “Francis is a new pope. We are expecting a step forward from him. If in one of his addresses he were to declare that Islam is a peaceful religion, that Muslims are not looking for war or violence, that would be progress in itself,” he said. A ceremony in March in which Pope Francis washed the feet of young inmates in Rome, including a Muslim girl, was “a gesture that was very, very much appreciated” by Al-Azhar, Gawad said.”

Mohamed Ahmed el-Tayeb

The Vatican and Islam
“As the world focused on a pope’s election and the enthusiasm that immediately followed, another significant religious event escaped detection. Since Pope John Paul II’s tenure, the Catholic Church has refused to hold Muslim theologians and clergy accountable for the hatred and violence many of them preach. Instead, the Vatican promotes dialogue and mutual understanding at all costs – even at the cost of moral credibility.”

Pope Francis Plans On Visiting Israel
“Three months after succeeding Benedict XVI , Pope Francis has intimated he is planning a visit to Israel. … At the end of the meeting, the deputy foreign minister presented the Pope with a silver embossment of Jerusalem and invited him to visit Israel, to which he replied that he has every intention of doing so.

Large pushes such as the seminal 1994 document Evangelicals and Catholics Together, the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, 2012’s Rick Warren’s interfaith “King’s Way-Building Bridges to Muslims” project, and this month’s MEPI Interfaith Efforts Lauded by Religious, Civic Leaders in Jerusalem, are all examples of how hard satan is pushing to unite the religions.

Eventually he will be successful. And once that happens, it is but a small step for the satan-ruled antichrist to walk into the temple and declare himself God, (2 Thessalonians 2:4) something he has wanted since almost the beginning. (Isaiah 14:13-14).

Our lord Jesus Christ will not allow that to continue for one second longer than He has ordained. (Daniel 7:25, Revelation 12:6, Revelation 13:5). The following event is going to happen:

“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.” (Revelation 19:11-16).

My favorite part, “he is called is The Word of God“.

The first time Jesus came He shed His blood for us (Revelation 1:5). The second time He comes, He’ll shed your blood for Him. (Revelation 14:20). Make sure your name is in His Lamb’s Book of Life and you will be raptured with the rest of the saints to glory when these things happen. You will come down with Him from above instead of being below and watching Him come for you.

Patrick Lawrence

Here is the Gospel. You need to know it!

Amen!!!

fiscal overlord, one world government, one world religion, tower of babel

Germany wants a fiscal overlord

Posted on October 19, 2012 by elizabethprata

The Tower of Babel

“Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.” (Genesis 10:1-9).”

Is God one big party pooper? Not allowing the men of the earth to have some fun, to build a tower to worship Him?

Nope, that’s not it. That is not why He stopped the tower building, confused the languages, and dispersed the people.

He did it because He knows that humans collecting together under the rule of one man (in that case, Nimrod) is bad for us. If one man runs everything, there are no checks and balances, and our evil ways will emerge very quickly to the detriment of all humankind.

Did He not say to Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply and fill the whole earth? (Genesis 1:28). But they didn’t.

And after the Flood, did God not say to Noah and his sons, “As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it” ? (Genesis 9:1). But they didn’t.

And in no more than 100 years after the flood, Nimrod had set himself up as dictator, founded the Babylonian Kingdom, and began worshiping idols by building this tower for worship of the false gods. The did the opposite of filling the earth. The gathered, huddled, collected. It was rebellion. And worse, the tower was a monument to their pride. It wasn’t built to worship God, it was intended for worship of idols.

They said:
“Come let us…make a name for ourselves“.

So God said,
“Come let us…disperse them”

We know that the Tribulation, AKA The Time of Jacob’s Trouble, will be a time of 7 years when sin will be allowed to course unrestrained through the world. (2 Thessalonians 2:6). Sin will reach its full course, its full measure. Without a restraint, the full impact of man’s evil will come out. The most evil man who ever lived will be allowed to create his own Tower of Babel so to speak. The antichrist will run the economy, the military and the religion of the world. It will be a one world government and there will be no checks and balances. What God stopped at the Tower of Babel will become all too real in the Day of the LORD.

We already have a dilution of the world’s languages. This article in How Stuff Works, The Future of Language has some interesting facts. They wrote-

“It’s difficult for linguists to know how many languages exist in the world at any given time, mainly because the point at which a dialect becomes a separate language is hard to pin down. Best estimates put the current total at 6,909 distinct languages. Despite the difficulties of counting languages, most experts agree on one thing: There are fewer languages around today than yesterday. That’s because languages are disappearing at an alarming rate – some experts predict that half of the current languages will be gone by the year 2100.”

“Imagine losing the languages of the world to a dominant global one. According to Dan Fitzgerald, a Washington, D.C.-based French instructor, the costs to humanity would be huge. “Much of the culture that goes along with each of those languages would also disappear,” he explains. … Some might say that we already have a world language: English. English is spoken in more than 100 countries, making it by far the most global language on earth. There are certainly other languages that are spoken by more of the world’s people, such as Mandarin Chinese and Hindi. However, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi are spoken in only 16 and 17 countries, respectively.”

In a sense, we already have a one world language, almost. At the United Nations you can put on headphones and listen to simultaneous translation. It is really amazing. Slate explains:

“The United Nations uses simultaneous interpretation, which means translating on the fly without breaks (as opposed to consecutive interpretation, in which the speaker and translator alternate). At any given moment, the U.N. Interpretation Service has a dozen interpreters working six booths—one for every official language. The pair of interpreters in the English booth translates into English, the French booth translates into French, and so on. Attendees can then listen to the interpretations on headphones, clicking across channels for different languages. The job is exhausting, so interpreters will usually switch off every 20 minutes or so. They can also take breaks when the speech is in their language, since no translation is necessary.”

Online, google translate will instantly translate any language on a web page to any other language, even Esperanto or Latin. So in some respects, a one world language is already here.

A one world religion is clicking along to close to fulfillment. Calls for ecumenism, tolerance, and an interfaith church based on religious elements of faith that we share and not the differences are getting louder. Ecumenism according to Walter A. Elwell, in The Concise Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, is “The organized attempt to bring about the cooperation and unity among Christians.” To this end, the Catholic Church and its practices are increasingly accepted in evangelical circles. Labyrinth walking, lectio divina, contemplative prayer, saintly visions, works/word-based faith, and direct revelation had all been part of the Catholic Church for many years but is now permeating the conservative Southern Baptist congregations like gangrene in a Civil War soldier.

Which is funny because the more that the conservative Protestant Churches accept Catholic ecumenism, the more they die an agonizing spiritual death, because Catholicism teaches that no salvation is available to anyone not a Catholic. So there’s their ecumenism for you. It is a classic bait-and-switch

[Proof-text: “For it is through Christ’s Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the People of God.” (CCC 816). ‘

That desire to congregate is reaching a height these days. The religious conglomeration that will be fulfilled in the Tribulation in a one world religion is ramping up now with demands for ecumenism and with the active push of the Roman Catholic Church to overturn the Reformation (and the more gullible Conservative Evangelicals accept the push).

Gathering together is a bad thing for humanity, not the least of which is because of the evil the prophesied overlord will perpetrate. And what’s worse, is the leaders of the world are clamoring for it. Read this headline from two days ago:

Germany shocks EU with fiscal overlord demand
“There must be an EU “currency commissioner” with sweeping powers to strike down national budgets; a “large step towards fiscal union”; and yet another EU treaty. Finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble dropped his bombshell in talks with German journalists on a flight from Asia, and apparently had the blessing of Angela Merkel, the chancellor. “When I put forward such proposals, you can take it as a given that the chancellor agrees,” he said.” … Mr Schaeuble said the currency chief should have powers similar to those of the EU’s competition commissioner, a man “feared around the world”. The competition Czar is the arch-enforcer of the EU machine, with powers to launch dawn raids, deploy SWAT teams, and block mergers on his own authority.”

Did you even know there was such a thing as a Competition Czar? I didn’t. And now the EU official wants a fiscal overlord? Wow.

In my opinion, one of the scariest things God said is in the opening verse above, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” (Genesis 11:6). But THE scariest is that in the tribulation, He will allow it.

While you still can,
COME TO CHRIST, HE IS MIGHTY TO SAVE!

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gnostic, new age, one world religion

I think the last religion will be Mystical Gnosticism, not Islam

Posted on September 16, 2012 by elizabethprata

This is just some opinion-speculation. I’ve been thinking about Islam, the Tribulation, and Gnosticism.

I am about to conclude an 8-part series on Gnosticism past and present. I’ve been studying Colossians and Paul makes quite a refutation of it…without ever mentioning it by name, lol. That study, plus what I’ve been seeing happen to our precious Protestant church lately is what was the impetus for looking at what Gnosticism is and why it is returning so definitely in Protestant denominations.

What I see is a terrible carnality drenching the precious church. There’s the carnality of the wants and desires. The Prosperity Gosplite preachers are tickling those ears quite successfully. They preach higher church numbers, bigger churches, coffee bars. They preach the desire for more money, cars, clothes, and Mall of America consumables is what ‘God really wants’ for you, nay, must give you according to the Law of Attraction.

And there is the carnality of the body that is infiltrating church, too. There are many things that are all about the body. There is contemporary concert performance which passes for praise music that offer throbbing beats and incites a carnal reaction. The praise dance craze is simply a performance of maidens in tights- carnality of the body- which is not worship. There are clothing choices which are designed to show off the body and are worn in church. Modesty is out the window. Tattoos, nose rings, questionable art, sexual sin…carnality of the body drenches the church.

Taking a detour for a moment to today’s news of the Muslim uprising… Islam has grown incredibly in the last ten years. Terrorism by Muslims has risen too. In this week’s Hal Lindsey Report, Mr Lindsey said, “The majority of Muslims may not be terrorists, but the majority of terrorists disturbing the world today are Muslims.” This is for a sovereign reason-

God said, “I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling.” (Zechariah 12:2a). The NLT says, “I will make Jerusalem like an intoxicating drink that makes the nearby nations stagger …” What we see in the Muslim frenzy against Israel these days certainly looks like drunken craziness and demonic anger the LORD said He would send. It is sobering to think (pun intended) that this demonic anger is only a flicker compared to what will occur in the Tribulation.

It’s hard to deny that the people who think that Islam will take over the world as the one world religion prophesied to happen as per Revelation 13:15-17 may be right. However, I tend to think that will not be the case. I think that pagan religion has always been a problem. Though in a sense Islam is pagan because it is false, I think the Gnostic pagan religion will be the one world lie at the end.

The first false religion was self-oriented. Tower of Babel exemplified that. I think what we’re seeing with Gnosticism/Mysticism is the beginning of the final lie religion the world will embrace.

Why not Islam? Because I think that the prophesied events of Isaiah 17, Isaiah 19, Obadiah, Ezekiel 38-39, and Psalm 83 will vanquish it. All those prophecies involve Muslim nations, neighbors of Israel who claim Allah and have vowed to destroy her. Each time, Israel will win. Each time,she will claim the land of the vanquished one. I think Israel’s success, rather, the LORD showing Himself holy in those victories on behalf of His people, will either break Islam completely or reduce it so such a whimper that all Muslims will be able to do is lick their wounds and feebly clamber aboard the Pagan train when it comes by.

So I don’t think the Antichrist will be Muslim…I think he will be someone who is a secret pagan now and once the Holy Spirit ceases His restraining ministry, will emerge as a soft, emergent, pagan, Gnostic whose appeal to the masses will coalesce the groundwork of that global church that has already been laid by Prosperity Gospel, Word-Faith, Legalist, Mystical New Age, Emergent pop-psychology preachers and teachers these last 2 millennia.

What do you think?