Category: prophecy

Posted in prophecy, Uncategorized

Is America under judgment?

Posted on by elizabethprata
Seven years ago I wrote in an email,

Obama is in Cairo today and he gave his friendly speech to the Muslim people. The unprecedented excitement prior to Obama’s arrival reached a fever pitch when shops began selling pendants labeled “Obama – new Tutankhamen of the world.“

Other news articles go on to decry how inappropriate it is to call a US President a messiah or king. However, any Christian who knows their bible knows that King Tut was a Pharaoh, and Pharaoh was one of the most evil rulers in the Old Testament! (Book of Exodus)

President Obama claims he is a Christian, yet he has reneged on his campaign promises. He says he is a Christian yet his Notre Dame speech on abortion was positively chilling. He says he is a Christian yet he promotes the gay lifestyle and all its attendant perversities: did you know that Obama proclaimed June Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender month? No…Obama is looking more like Pharaoh all the time.

In the bible, God judged Pharaoh harshly because of Pharaoh’s insistence in doing things his way instead of God’s way, and that after seeing the proof of God’s miraculous judgments throughout the land. I do not know what God will do, of course, but I do know America is ripe for judgment. I think it is highly interesting that the Egyptian people are calling Obama a Pharaoh. And as a real Christian, the last person I’d want to be compared to is Pharaoh.”

“America seems ripe for judgment”… The discerners of the church body have been saying ‘judgment in America’ for a while. I know I have since 2007-2008. In 2010 I’d written that America seemed to have passed the “point of no return. Before the Economic Crash of 2008, all had been going along like it had been in this country. America was strong and mighty and seemingly invincible. Warning that judgment was coming soon was met with strange looks and shaking of heads. No brimstone was falling, after all. Just because we don’t see brimstone falling from the sky does not mean we as a nation are not experiencing judgment.

Many people think of judgment as the kind that occurred at Sodom and Gomorrah: brimstone from the sky and obliteration of the entire city. (Genesis 19:24). And that IS one kind of judgment.

Bible Fact: There are 13 mentions of brimstone (sulfur) in the Bible. Six mentions are in the Old Testament. Seven mentions are in the New Testament. Of the 7 mentions of brimstone in the NT, six are in Revelation.

The wrath of God is not one-dimensional. There are in fact many different kinds of wrath that God displays. Hosea 5:12 says “He is as a moth to Ephraim or or dry rot to Judah”, working silently and invisibly. In his 2012 sermon “When God Abandons a Nation“, John MacArthur outlined five distinct kinds of wrath the Lord has displayed throughout the Bible.

1. Eternal wrath: that is the punishing eternal, judgment God brings upon sinners in their death.
2. Eschatalogical wrath: God’s stored-up anger unleashed at the end of this present age upon the world, promised by Old Testament saints, outlined at length in Jesus’ Olivet Discourse, and seen unfolding through Revelation.
3. Cataclysmic wrath: These are tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc., the result of sin and the curse upon the world.
4. Consequential wrath: this is a person receiving the just due for their actions while on earth, the sowing and reaping.
5. Abandonment: This is the wrath seen in Romans 1:18-32. MacArthur preached, “God will abandon sinners to their own choices and the consequences of those choices. And just what is this abandoning act on God’s part, it is the removal of restraining grace. It is when God lets go and turns a society over to its own sinful freedoms and the results of those freedoms. No Scripture more directly confronts this abandonment and its consequences than Romans 1 does.”

A Hillary Clinton presidency would be a Jezebel judgment in my opinion.

MacArthur said in that 2012 sermon that “It’s pretty convincing that God has abandoned our nation.” God has done so in the past to other nations, many times. InHosea 4:17 it is recorded that God said, “Ephraim is joined unto idols, let him alone.” America isn’t special that we should not expect the same treatment as other rebellious nations when we abandon Him.

In Acts 14:16, the Apostle Paul said, “In the generations gone by, He…God…permitted all the nations to go their own way.” This is the story of history. All the nations of history go their own way. So like the nations of old, like the nations past, we follow the same cycle of having the truth, rejecting the truth and being abandoned by God. ~MacArthur

Can you think of a worse wrath than for God to leave you alone? Whether He is abandoning you as an individual or as a nation, it is a deeply disturbing thought. In Romans 1:18-32,

Three times you have the statement, “God gave them over.” This term paradidomiin the Greek can have a judicial sense. It can be used of a judgment made on a criminal who was then handed over for punishment. Each of these phrases expresses the fact that the wrath of God has acted judicially to sentence sinners. It is God officially giving them over. It is God letting them go to the uninterrupted cause and effect their sinful choices produce. When this judgment falls, there is a depriving of restraining grace and sin runs rampant through a society. (Source)

I’ve been thinking about the real possibility of a woman for president. I am working through the Bible to determine what its stance is on women in political leadership. Queen Esther was a queen, but she didn’t lead and had no influence. Queen Jezebel led, and she did have influence- evil influence. In this life, we have seen successful women leaders in Queen Elizabeth 1, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher… Since God ordains leaders for His purposes, He allowed those female leaders to serve His inscrutable purposes by leading for a time. Yet in the Bible we read in Isaiah 3:12 that it is a national shame for a woman to lead, My people—infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them. Barak begged Deborah to accompany him on the military campaign and she said OK but it will be a shame to the men. (Judges 4:9).

I see the political pundits saying that a Trump presidency would be a judgment upon America, but what about a Hillary presidency, a female president? That would also be a judgment, I believe. A Jezebel judgment.

Do the people of a nation under the wrath of abandonment know it is happening when it is happening? Non-believers don’t of course, and even most believers don’t. But the Prophets certainly did, and it was a deep lament to them.

Cut off your hair and throw it away; take up a lament on the barren heights, for the LORD has rejected and abandoned this generation that is under his wrath. (Jeremiah 7:29)

I’ve sensed for a while that America was under judgment, as I mentioned at the start. So have a lot of other people. Some who have a pulpit occasionally use it to calm their flocks and re-orient them to a biblical perspective.

To that end, at specific points in his 47-year pastorate at Grace Community Church, John MacArthur would do this. My opinion is that he is a man like the men of Issachar, as 1 Chronicles 12:32 describes, “men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do;” and as Treasury of Scripture describes, “intelligent men, who understood the signs of the times, well versed in political affairs, and knew what was proper to be done in all the exigencies of human life”.

These culturally-focused sermons have struck a chord with me at the few times he used the pulpit this way. They have helped me make sense of what is happening around me in terms of God’s sovereignty and His ordained plan. There is a lot to think about with this Fall’s Presidential election. Phil Johnson has been vocal about the two main party candidates. As recently as this week he said on Facebook that Donald Trump is an inveterate narcissist and a shameless adulterer, and the other candidate, Hillary Clinton, is a pathological liar with a Jezebel complex, and that both are blatant antichrists and utter moral reprobates. Wow.

With just under 4 months to go, any Christian with a pulse must be thinking hard about our election quandary and the future of our nation. My friend Landon Chapman said, quoting Jerry Bridges:

Historically, God has not spared the righteous when He judges a nation (though He is well able to do so if He chooses, see Exodus 9: 5-7). – Jerry Bridges

A sobering thought. Even though brimstone is not falling, if the moths have been at work and for example, if we are attacked by an eager enemy, the righteous die under the bombs and fallout just as much as the unrighteous. So I list these helpful, biblically re-orienting sermons so that perhaps if you listen, you might yourself become re-oriented to God’s word and take hope in our future and live in peaceably in His joy. Abandonment leaves a vacuum, and we already see the enemy horde from the spiritual realms advancing with maniacal glee to take up ramparts.

Iowa: Push to apply transgender laws to churches
California: A state bill intended to restrict Christian colleges and schools from discriminating on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.

The above two bills are serious and if passed, impacts could be widespread with a cascading negative effect on all American churches and Christian colleges. It’s coming. Therefore, I offer these cultural/biblical sermons for your consideration. They have all helped me, some more than once. I hope they help you as well.

And so, we are under His wrath. That brings the question…is there any hope? Is there any hope for this country, for any society in this condition? Well, I will take you to a passage of Scripture that gives us hope. Turn in your Bible to the Psalms, and I want you to look at this, Psalm 81…Psalm 81 because this cycle is a constantly visible cycle in history, going on all the time. It has happened before in Israel. It is happening even now in Israel. Many generations of the Jewish people, God’s chosen people for a future redemption, many generations have gone through this cycle, rejecting the true God, rationalizing about their condition, inventing complex religion, descending. Is there any hope for them in the future? Is there any hope for the western world? For any nation in the world? For us?

This is not about politics, although there are things we could talk about. You’re not voting for a pastor, you’re not voting for a spiritual leader, you’re voting for someone who has some sense of morality. Since the Bible says that the role of government is to punish evil doers and protect the good, you better have somebody in power who understands what is good and what is evil.

2012: Homosexuality and the Campaign for Immorality

One of the parties, the Democratic Party, has now made Romans 1, the sins of Romans 1, their agenda. What God condemns, they affirm. What God punishes, they exalt. Shocking, really. The Democratic Party has become the anti-God party, the sin-promoting party.

2015: We Will Not Bow

A lot is happening at a very rapid rate. And with all the discussion that’s been going on, I’ve been kind of eager to get to you, and maybe help to give you a perspective. … This nation, at its highest level, has taken a position against God. Such blasphemous rebellion is energized—it is energized by the corruption of the collection of sinful hearts, which make up this nation or any nation. There’s no question about that.

My friend Greg Flowers summarized the next two sermons this way: “Pastor John emphasized the nation’s need to respect the law of God to prevent its own destruction, and declared God’s standards as the only standards by which a nation is measured. While acknowledging Christians’ inability to bring an entire nation to worship at the Master’s feet, MacArthur stressed the fundamental need to see the one true God elevated above all other gods.”

2016: Who is God’s Candidate? Part 1

My good friend Iain Murray said this: “A secular state is a lie. Government is a divine institution. The powers that be are ordained of God.” America likes to talk about the separation of church and state. Of course, our constitution doesn’t say that. But the separation of church and state, which is now the new perspective that dominates everything is essentially paving the way for the death of a society.

2016: Who is God’s Candidate? Part 2

The truth of the matter is God has requirements for all rulers, all those who have authority over people, and it’s laid out in Scripture. … I told you that all people in all nations were created in the image of God for His glory, so no one is exempt – no person is exempt, no family is exempt, no society is exempt, no nation is exempt, no race is exempt, no ethnic group is exempt from being responsible to acknowledge God and glorify Him. All people who are created, were created in the image of God for His glory.

The day is sobering and the times are troubling. We all strive to display the joy of Christ in our daily life, to persevere in and aura of hope and peace. We know to be gentle and humble, and to love our friend, neighbor and enemy. But there is no doubt that the times demand of us a careful attention to the Bible and its paths, more than ever in fact. We don’t like to be downers but we also don’t ignore the fact that we are living in difficult times that are on the precipice of being massively more difficult soon. We know that God created each person on earth specifically and for a specific purpose in their era. If I am here now, for just such a time as this, what can I do to both advance the kingdom like I’m supposed to, and also prepare for the times ahead? We must do our diligence to lift Jesus’ name to the highest with all our strength, soul, mind, and heart.

The wrath of abandonment
Posted in prophecy, Uncategorized

The Ark, The Rainbow, and True Liberty

Posted on by elizabethprata

“America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal – to discover and maintain liberty among men.” – Woodrow Wilson

Then the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals,a the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” And Noah did all that the LORD had commanded him. (Genesis 7:1-5)

Six years in the planning and making, The Ark Encounter exhibit opens July 7, although the word “exhibit” might be understating it a little. The Answers in Genesis Creation Museum just over the state border from Cincinnati in Kentucky has almost completed their life-sized replica of Noah’s Ark, ready for thousands and thousands of visitors from all over the world. More from Wikipedia. The Museum itself is about 45 miles from the Ark Encounter Theme Park. Here are a couple of still shots from their May 2016 promo video. Continue reading “The Ark, The Rainbow, and True Liberty” →

Posted in prophecy, Uncategorized

“Homosexual sin is different”

Posted on by elizabethprata

I was as grieved by the massacre in Orlando as much as anyone. I shed tears over the article that recounted a youth’s last texts to his Mommy. I shed tears over the bartender’s recounting of his and others’ escape. Omar Mateen perpetrated a heinous crime.

But another heinous crime in the face of God is homosexuality. In reading these articles, I was saddened by the sudden change of the newspapers publishing them of their website banners to rainbows. There were rainbows all over the place, in ‘support’ of the homosexual lifestyle. False teachers such as liberal Glennon Doyle Melton and influential Rachel Held Evans immediately responded with Facebook statuses in support of homosexuality. Evans said in her note that Christian theology “hurts” gay people. Evans’ note about the Orlando massacre got 2176 shares and over 200 comments before I quit looking.

I quote the passage at Romans 1:18-32 a lot. It is the section where Paul shows what God does to a society/individual that rejects Him. At the last, God judges them with homosexuality and that means that “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.” (Romans 1:29).

Homosexuality is the judgment upon a person. Its widespread presence in a culture indicates that the judgment upon a society is already here.

Continue reading ““Homosexual sin is different”” →

Posted in prophecy, Uncategorized

Kay Cude Poetry: Desertion

Posted on by elizabethprata

Kay Cude is a poet whose sensitivity to the glorious salvation of Jesus Christ is uniquely expressed through poetry and picture. Here is her latest offering, in which she explains her thought process. Enjoy

—————————–Kay Cude—————————–

If you look closely at the tower, you’ll see a tiny figure of someone, which refers to the statement, “As gazed I o’er the valley fair, to there below from tower high.”

That little figure caught my eye, as well as the city lighted up and the storm approaching from the left (approaching spiritual death). So I began to write. The city represents the safety of true salvation in Christ and understanding His Gospel.

The people represent those captured by a “different gospel” suggested as the “real” place of safety. Even though they “know” God’s truth — they are persuaded to run to false teaching and reject Christ.

Christ’s refuge is known to them and still stands in its truth, but when extreme peril approaches, they are convinced by someone’s whim (spiritual deception), to flee to eternal death and separation. Even the donkey digs in his heels against the “unknown” way,” and the dog barks at their sudden rejection.

Their end is eternal separation and eternal living death because they quickly deserted Christ’s truth for a distorted gospel.

 

did
Posted in prophecy, Uncategorized

The Language of Death: Obituaries

Posted on by elizabethprata

Death, the final frontier. These are the lives of the starbaby Humans. Their 7000-year mission: to explore strange new hearts, to seek out new life and new religion, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

OK, a thousand pardons for re-writing that famous opening line from the original Star Trek television series.

Death IS the final frontier. All humans are eternal, death is just a passing over of the line between this life and the next. However, the life in the next is permanently and eternally fixed. One will either pass over the boundary into the final frontier into hell, or into heaven.

And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, (Hebrews 9:27) Continue reading “The Language of Death: Obituaries” →

Posted in prophecy, Uncategorized

The End is still Near, Still Sharing the Light

Posted on by elizabethprata

I can’t wait to see what you all look like when you are glorified! I can’t wait to see the glassy sea, the angels who have helped me, the face of Jesus! I can’t wait to be free from pain and shed of my sin nature. I can’t wait to be in eternity! However, I will await His timing. We all must await the number of our days to be up and His determination of when we enter glory.

For now though, the Tribulation is still to come according to the Divine schedule.

The Tribulation is prophesied to be a period where many things will happen. One of them is that the earth and heavens themselves will be wildly disrupted. Landforms disappear. Weather patterns evaporate. Orbits cease. And more.

The outline of what Jesus will be doing at that time is presented to us in Daniel 9:24. The Lord will do 6 things:

Continue reading “The End is still Near, Still Sharing the Light” →

Posted in bible, king, melchizedek, priest, prophecy

The Altar is Closed Forever!

Posted on by elizabethprata

Our Pastor has arrived at a “difficult and puzzling” verse about the mysterious figure of the Priest-King Melchizedek in Genesis 13-14.

First to mention, is that I am completely proud that our pastor does not skip difficult or puzzling verses. He digs right in with studious joy, and delivers the information in a comprehensible and engaging way.

Here is the blurb for the sermon, “How can Jesus be both our great High Priest and our King? How can he be both David’s son and Lord? What does this mean for our lives? The author of Hebrews says this story is “hard to explain” and that it contains “meat for the mature” not “milk” for infants. So get ready to put on your floaties and hop into the deep end of the pool!”

SDG!

———————————————————-
Further Reading:

The End Time: Jesus as High Priest

The End Time: Melchizedek, one of the Bible’s most mysterious Characters

Let Us Reason: The Priesthood of Melchizedek

Grace To You: Bible Q&A- Who was Melchizedek?

Posted in bible, prophecy, prophetic interrogation, social justice

Prophetic interrogation, what it is and why to watch out for people using the term

Posted on by elizabethprata
I was reading up on an organization called Sojourners. It is an organization whose focus is fighting against social injustice with some faith thrown in. In their “About us” page they used the phrase “prophetic interrogation”. I was intrigued by that. New terms popping up that have a Christian overlay to them interest me. Like this tweet from Michelle Lesley.

Here is the Sojourners blurb where they audaciously announce they they are prophetic interrogators.

Sojourners magazine and Sojourners online publication sit at the intersection of faith, politics, and culture. Our coverage goes beyond the trending headlines to uncover and explore in depth the hidden injustices in the world around us. Our call to prophetic interrogation means we seek the truth as informed by our biblical roots.

Apparently it is not enough to address obvious injustices, one must now uncover hidden injustice, too. Designating one’s organization or the people in it prophetic interrogators is audacious because they have not been called to perform prophetic interrogation. The term is an old term used to describe a rhetorical device in the Bible whereupon the ACTUAL prophets speak words to the nation Israel (or other nations as designated by God) to question them either actually or rhetorically. Here are a couple of descriptions of what the term prophetic interrogation means.

Elements of Prophetic Interpretation. 

THE INTERROGATION — while its legitimate use is to ask a question — is also used to affirm or deny with great emphasis. Affirmative interrogations usually have no or not in connection with the verb. Example. — “Is not God in the height of the heavens?” Job 22:12. Examples of a negative. — “Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once?” Isa.66:8. “Can the rush grow up without mire?” Job 8:11.

From the book Minor Prophets Part 2, by Michael H. Floyd,

Prophets would often provoke their audience with accusatory or confrontational questions (e.g., Isaiah 7:13, 22:1b, 16; Jeremiah 4:30; Ezekiel 18:2, 25, 29; cf. Psalm 50:16, 53:3), and inferential questioning would serve as one way of pursuing this rhetorical strategy (e.g., Amos 3:8; Isaiah 50:7-9). In prophetic discourse inferential questioning usually serves to foster an assessment of some claim about the nature of Yahweh’s involvement in human affairs (—-> prophecy).

I hope the reader can see why it is audacious (brash, arrogant) to designate one’s self a prophet called by God to interrogate entire nations, systems, or organizations. First, prophetic interrogation as seen in the Bible always points back to God.

Secondly, God calls prophets, one does not designation one’s self as a prophet (in NT times, a pastor). Third, the willingness to call one’s self prophetic interrogators reveals an even more symptomatic problem. I mentioned that Sojourners is a social justice organization that ‘intersects where faith, politics and culture meet’. The church is called to share the Gospel, period, not entertain politics and culture. However, social justice organizations often lose their singular focus and dilute or even do away with Gospel proclamation. See this paper published in Britain in 2005 titled, Exploring ethos? Discourses of `charity’ in the provision of emergency services for homeless people. The author John May compared three systems of generosity, and took a particular interest in the reasons why individuals and organisations become involved in the task of caring for, or serving, homeless people.

We Christians know that loving our neighbor is our response to the saving grace Jesus bestowed on us and our desire to nurture, help, and serve as a logical and an emotional response to that grace. Sometimes this perplexes secular people, and so the thrust of the paper was to compare charity work among “Christian caritas, secular humanism, and postsecular charity.” Mr May writes of Christians engaged in social justice,

The Christian ethical impulse to charity is most clearly displayed in the reforming zeal of evangelicals in the 19th century. Underpinned by the great evangelical revival which began at the end of the 18th century, a widespread depth of religious faith became a motivating factor for the establishment of a far-reaching charitable network, three quarters of which, according to Heasman, was evangelical Christian in nature. As Owen (1965) suggests, “So unwearied in well-doing were certain groups of Bible Christians that in the public mind the word ‘philanthropist’ became all but synonymous with ‘evangelical’, and ‘philanthropy’ was applied to the good works that appeals most to evangelical tastes” (page 93). 

…These outpourings of 19th-century Christian charity relied on an overtly evangelical underpinning of action. Charitable activity was essentially entwined with an urgency to convert people to Christian ways of living. As the impacts of the evangelical revival waned, Christian theology became increasingly liberalised, undermining the link between social welfare and salvation. [emphasis mine]

…Another, related dilemma, relates to the intersection of faith and political worldview. Some Christians view their caritas through an individualist political lens – believing that social problems result from an individual’s failures, so the emphasis is on individual conversion as a means of over-coming personal failure (Steinfels, 2001). Others see poverty as caused by unjust social, economic, and political structures and life circumstances largely beyond the control of individuals. Christian charity in this context not only provides personal strength for these individuals, but also presents a ‘prophetic interrogation’ (Wallis, 2001) of social injustice more generally.

That is the problem with organizations that focus on social injustice to the exclusion of the Gospel. The historical trend went like this:

  • serving others in social welfare as a Gospel response, conversion in mind
  • crusading for social justice to rectify the symptoms that caused the person to need the welfare in the first place
  • to speak for God in interrogating entire nations or systems as to why the injustice exists.

Each step in this trend removes the Gospel from center focus and elevates the people performing the service to exalted positions they do not warrant.

My message today: watch out for the term “prophetic interrogation.” Add it to your list of terms like anointing and the others that do not mean what the speaker thinks it means.

Posted in eschatology, prophecy, rapture, second coming, tribulation

12 Things to Know about the Antichrist, or, Why Prophecy is Important

Posted on by elizabethprata

There are niche segments of study within the theological world that are more valued than others. Discernment gets a bad name, often rightly, because many discernment writers tend to drift toward a more “censorious spirit” as Gill said in his Exposition, stating, “Censorious persons rarely have the good will of their fellow creatures” in mind. However as the pendulum tends to swing, it makes a full arc and for a while discernment receives a poor reputation in total, even while there are good discernment writers and speakers out there (Justin Peters comes to mind) mixed in with the cranks and angry ones.

Though all Christians are called to discern between right and wrong, some have been given extra discernment as a gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:10). While on the one hand it’s not to be abused, it’s also not to be dismissed. (FMI on the gift of discerning of spirits, go here).

Eschatology is another area of study which also receives a poor reputation, in no thanks to many Christians themselves. Eschatology is the study of last things, AKA, prophecy, especially the period since the First Coming of Jesus Christ. Though it’s forbidden, some date-set and of course the end date at which their predictions pass with no fulfillment make a mockery of Christ’s name to unbelievers and a disappointment to the believers who were drawn in. Others who study eschatology badly simply perpetuate ridiculous theories concerning the end times. Others wrongly insist that eschatological subjects are biblically unknowable.

My blog covers three areas; discernment, prophecy and encouragement. I’ve seen the pendulum swing from side to side in each of these areas over the last 7 years of daily blogging here at The End Time. I have maintained from the beginning of my blogging life and my Christian witness in real life, that prophecy is important – because it was important to Jesus. Last days are spoken of in almost every book of the New Testament. Paul spent a good deal of time teaching it to the Thessalonians. Even as the babes in Christ that they were, Paul pulled out all the stops to ensure that these Thessalonian Christian babies knew the importance of living with a very present knowledge of Christ’s imminent return. Doing so gives us a heart for the lost, a fervency in life, and a strength to look forward beyond persecution or trouble. I refuse to marginalize prophecy as a legitimate area of study.

Here is Michael Holst stating the point of eschatology so much better than I ever did.

12 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE ANTI-CHRIST
by Matthew Holst • April 01, 2016

One of the Apostle Paul’s great preoccupations in both of his letters to the church at Thessalonica is the second coming of Christ. He was not only concerned with getting the doctrine “right” but also with the great pastoral implications of such teaching. In 1 Thessalonians he writes concerning the second coming of Christ in relation to the resurrection of the dead and the gathering together of saints who are alive at that time. In 2 Thessalonians he reinforces what he had already taught at Thessalonica (2 Thess. 2:5) concerning the dangers of the last days, specifically with regard to the great apostasy in the church induced by the revelation of the Man of Lawlessness. 

Depending on your eschatological framework, your identification of the Man of Lawlessness and his activities may differ from what I wish to offer in this post. Coming to terms with the fact that there will indeed be a Man of Lawlessness plays an important role in the life of the believer as he or she eagerly waits for the day of Christ’s coming. In days of relative peace, we must ready ourselves and forthcoming generations–especially our own children–for the days of anarchic deception that will accompany the Man of Lawlessness. 

We, in the Calvinistic and Reformed church, have not done justice to the Scripture’s teaching on this matter. We often rightly respond to the “Left Behind” industry with dismay and sarcasm. In so doing, however, we have, perhaps inadvertently failed to sufficiently and soberly grasp Scripture’s teaching on this period of history which will be instrumental in bringing about a catastrophic and irreversible apostasy. Here then, are twelve biblical observations about the Man of Lawlessness (MoL) to help prepare us for that day.

For the rest of Mr Horst’s essay, go to the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

I’d like to reiterate that the Rapture (when Christ calls for His Bride in the air, 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17) and the Second Coming (when His feet touch down at the Mount of Olives at the end of the Tribulation, Mt 16:27, Zechariah 14:4) are two separate events.

Posted in millennial kingdom, prophecy, satan

Must satan be released?

Posted on by elizabethprata
“New Jerusalem” EPrata photo

I love prophecy. I always have. It is glorious to read in the Bible, uplifting me even when the Prophets pronounce doom. This is because I worship a God who prophesies, and He prophesies because He is Master of all history. He Prophesies because He can. He is the only One who can. And it’s especially uplifting when the prophecy comes true, namely, in the form of the Messiah who came and died and was resurrected on the third day.


 remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
(Isaiah 46:9-10, emphasis mine)

We worship a God who is that powerful. He ordains every event, every heart, every minutiae throughout the entire universe. Yet He tells us – His created creatures – what He is doing and will do.

For the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. (Amos 3:7).

but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name. (John 20:31).

In the Word of God AKA the Bible, God has set down a progression of past and future history which we can read and study and understand. This is what is called fulfilled prophecy and unfulfilled prophecy. Prophecy remaining to be fulfilled includes (but is not limited to),

  1. The Rapture of the Church
  2. The Great Tribulation
  3. Jesus’ Second Coming to Earth
  4. Vanquishing of the Armies at Armageddon
  5. All Israel Will be Saved
  6. The Millennium Kingdom
  7. Satan Bound in the Pit during the Millennium Kingdom
  8. Satan released
  9. Great White Throne Judgment
  10. Destruction of earth and universe, New Heaven and New Earth
  11. Eternity
  12. ?
EPrata photo

What a powerful God. The word for that concept is omnipotent. Let’s get back to using proper Bible words for things, such as justification, sanctification, glorification, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotent, transcendence, immanence, etc.

Omnipotence is an attribute of God alone. It is the quality of having all power (Psalm 115:3). He can do all things that do not conflict with His holy nature. God has the power to do anything He wants to do. However, God cannot do that which is contrary to His nature. For example, God cannot lie (Titus 1:2).

Omnipotence is referred to in Job 42:2.

I know that you can do all things and that no plan of yours can be thwarted.

As Jesus returns and protects all the recently converted Jews at Petra at the end of the Tribulation, and swings over to Armageddon and slays the collected armies, then lands on the Mount of Olives which then splits in two, Jesus subsequently sets up the kingdom on earth which will last for a thousand years.

The Millennium Kingdom is a period of time where all the promises to Israel about inhabiting their promised lands without need for fighting to keep it or to fend off attacking armies will be fulfilled. The Messiah will personally rule and reign and the world will be in peace.

The people who are alive at the end of the Tribulation will include both saved and unsaved. In order to determine who will be allowed to enter the Kingdom (saved) Jesus will gather all the nations in front of Him, and He will separate the believers from the unbelievers. This is the Sheep and Goats judgment, as explained here. (Matthew 25:32-33).

Jesus will also have an angel cast satan (and by implication, his demons) into the pit to be sealed in for 1000 years- the entire period of the Millennium Kingdom. (Revelation 20:1-2). Imagine those who are born into the Millennium Kingdom living with Jesus reigning perfectly and peacefully, and no satan or demons around to tempt them or to deceive the nations!

However, just because believers enter the Kingdom, it does not mean that their offspring will necessarily be believers. As people are born and grow up, they live on the planet under Jesus’ rule and outwardly submit, because He rules with a rod of iron. (Revelation 2:27). Inwardly they are rebelling. This is because people are still sinners with a sin-nature. Not all are glorified yet.

But Jesus knows this, and he has a plan.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. 2And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, 3and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while. (Revelation 20:1-3, emphasis mine).

The Master’s Seminary published an essay in Spring 2014 addressing the question, why must satan be released?

As with all previous “must statements,” it is not only that Satan will be released, as seen with the future tense in Rev 20:7 (“And when the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison,”), but also Scripture plainly states that after the thousand years are over, Satan “must be released for a short time.” Chafer considered that, “No small mystery gathers around the fact that Satan is released from the abyss even for ‘a little season.’” He further refers to it as “this strange release.” Based on the normal use of “must” in other Scriptures, many scholars also mark its use in Rev 20:3. Thomas writes in regard to Satan’s release, “It is a divine necessity. . . for the dragon to be released ‘after these things.’” Swete concurs, writing in reference to the future release that “it must come; there is a necessity for it (dei).” Alford refers to the usage as “the dei of prophecy; must according to the necessity of God’s purposes.”

For it is written of satan’s final defeat:

And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. (Revelation 20:7-10).

The Master’s Seminary article continues:

In addition to the other reasons, Satan must be released to deceive the nations and bring about not only the final rebellion, but also the final deaths of all humans who reject the Messiah. Further, God’s promise “to curse the ones who curse you” actually relates to all enemies of Israel and not only to the Gentile nations. In keeping with God’s Word, God curses Satan and throws him into the lake of fire (Rev 20:10). Then when death has been abolished forever and after the Great White Throne judgment of the eternally damned (Rev 20:11–15), when all evil will have been divinely eradicated, then the new heavens and new earth—and New Jerusalem—will arrive.

And what a day that will be!

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