Testing to see if I can post to this blog.

Wars and Earthquakes and Pestilences

Matthew 24 and Luke 21: Jesus is telling His disciples about the signs of the times to look for when He is to return:

False Christs: No new ones that I'm aware of but there's always the Imam Mahdi expected by Muslims, and there's always the Pope, the main Antichrist of them all, currently Pope Francis who is frequently in the news these days

Wars and rumors of war: North Korea, Iran

Earthquakes in diverse places: Japan and Ecuador in the last couple of days.

Pestilences: Ebola and now Zika

Persecutions of Christians and other nonMuslims: All over the world wherever Islam dominates

Earlier Protestant Reformed on God's plan for Israel

REFORMERS COMMENTS ON THE JEWISH PEOPLE:

John Calvin

"I extend the word Israel to all the people of God, according to this meaning, ­When the Gentiles shall come in, the Jews also shall return from their defection to the obedience of faith; and thus shall be completed the salvation of the whole Israel of God, which must be gathered from both; and yet in such a way that the Jews shall obtain the first place, being as it were the first born in God's family.

...as Jews are the firstborn, what the Prophet declares must be fulfilled, especially in them: for that scripture calls all the people of God Israelites, it is to be ascribed to the pre-eminence of that nation, who God had preferred to all other nations...God distinctly claims for himself a certain seed, so that his redemption may be effectual in his elect and peculiar nation...God was not unmindful of the covenant which he had made with their fathers, and by which he testified that according to his eternal purpose he loved that nation: and this he confirms by this remarkable declaration, ­that the grace of the divine calling cannot be made void."

(see Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XIX, Epistle to the Romans, Baker Book House, 1981, p. 434-440.)

=======================================
Jonathan Edwards

"Jewish infidelity shall be overthrown...the Jews in all their dispersions shall cast away their old infidelity, and shall have their hearts wonderfully changed, and abhor themselves for their past unbelief and obstinacy. They shall flow together to the blessed Jesus, penitently, humbly, and joyfully owning him as their glorious King and only Savior, and shall with all their hearts, as one heart and voice, declare his praises unto other nations...Nothing is more certainly foretold than this national conversion of the Jews in Rom. xi.

Besides the prophecies of the calling of the Jews, we have a remarkable providential seal of the fulfillment of this great event, by a kind of continual miracle, viz. their being preserved a distinct nation...the world affords nothing else like it. There is undoubtedly a remarkable hand of providence in it. When they shall be called, that ancient people, who alone were so long God's people for so long a time, shall be his people again, never to be rejected more. They shall be gathered together into one fold, together with the Gentiles...."

(The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 1, Banner of Truth Trust, 1976, page 607.)

THE ORIGIN OF THE STAR OF DAVID: Not occultic after all

I did some posts some time ago on occultic symbols such as the symbol at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul that had some kind of strange effect on me from just seeing it, also the Triquetra which has a similarly strange effect, and also the Star of David, which interestingly does not have that kind of effect on me although I understood at the time that it has a similarly occultic origin. The lack of such an effect on me is interesting -- to my mind anyway -- since it turns out it may not have an occultic origin after all. (I'm sure others think my having any kind of identifiable feeling in response to a mere symbol is crazy or evidence of theological error, but oh well. I'm just reporting on my experience for whatever it's worth. I think it could be the supernatural gift of discerning of spirits, but I realize that such gifts are not supposed to be given to us these days and for the most part I've accepted that idea.)

Now today Chris Pinto on today's radio show has uncovered another way of understanding the Star of David that is far more satisfying (since I'd really rather not think of Israel as flying a flag with an occultic symbol on it).

This explanation goes back to Prague in the year 1648 when they came up with the symbol as a way of honoring the Jewish people for their service to the nation in fending off an attack by the Swedes. It was Jesuits whose research established the symbol and it's based on the Hebrew letter "D" for "David" which was in its archaic form a triangle. It's made up of two "D"s for the first and last letter of the name David. It was originally called the Shield of David, rather than the Star of David, and when and how it became the Star of David is apparently unknown. All this is according to the research of historian Israel Shahak.

This makes a lot of sense it seems to me and is simply a lot more satisfying explanation than the notion that it had an occultic origin.

Rise of Greek Neo-Nazi Party something to watch

I can't keep up with this stuff. I've had to let many of Chris Pinto's recent programs go by without comment because I'm focused elsewhere. But I have to make at least a brief mention of today's program. It's titled Fox News and the Vatican, but it also covers developments in Greece as their neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party has been gaining power there.

The story about a Fox News consultant's being hired by the Vatican to improve their public relations is certainly interesting too, but as Chris Pinto points out, the rise of the Greek Golden Dawn party is an echo of Nazi Germany that isn't getting the attention it deserves.

The depressed economic situation in Greece is unfortunately similar to Germany's position after the first World War, a pretty desperate situation in which people have been committing suicide. Such a situation in Germany laid the groundwork for Hitler's rise as their savior. The Golden Dawn party in Greece is violent, much like Hitler's thuggish brown shirts. Recent stories include the fact that 50% of the Greek police voted for the Golden Dawn, and that a Golden Dawn elected official physically attacked a woman who represents the Left -- on a TV program.

The Golden Dawn also has occultic/satanic roots, as did Hitler's government.

More specifically, the Golden Dawn uses a swastika symbol, promotes Hitler's Mein Kampf, and denies the Holocaust.

Something to be watching, wouldn't you say?

Rome past present and future

Thanks to Chris Pinto I'm now convinced of at least some elements of an end-times system called Historicism, as opposed to Premillennialism, Amillennialism, etc. etc. I haven't studied it yet and all I really know is that he and others -- ex-Catholic priest Richard Bennett for instance -- have shown that the Catholic Church was recognized by true Christians from very early on as the Harlot Church described in the Book of Revelation.

That means that at least some of the scripture verses that these days are often taken to refer to future events have already been fulfilled, most of them having to do with the Antichrist and the false church of Rome. That doesn't mean that there can't be yet a future fulfillment of all these things as well since the Catholic Church is hardly a thing of the past.

I haven't yet embraced Historicism as a system, all I know is that I've been learning a great deal about church history lately, things today's churches don't seem to know anything about, that don't fit into any of the other end times systems.

It still seems to me that the seventieth week of Daniel is awaiting future fulfillment. It may be that some events today's churches often think of as yet future and belonging to that future period of seven years have already been fulfilled, but that doesn't eliminate the possibility of their also having a future fulfillment as well. But there can only be one fulfillment of Daniel's 70th week, and that must be future.

In light of what I've been learning it's rather depressing to hear Christian ministries, even watchmen/discernment type ministries, talk about the Roman Church as if it were a Christian Church, such as Jan Markell's ministry Understanding the Times where today she was interviewing Ray Comfort about the Holocaust and neither of them seemed to have a clue to the dominating role of Rome in that event, and in fact the modeling of the Holocaust on the Inquisition. Such as the yellow star to identify the Jews, which goes back to the Inquisition.

And here the European Union is shaping up to be the Fourth Reich or Holy Roman Empire and few have any idea. Great Tribulation (insofar as there is yet to come a future expression of this) = revived Inquisition, new Holocaust?

Chris Pinto's revelations of Rome-based conspiracies

Chris Pinto just goes on talking in his calm matter-of-fact way knocking the wind out of me with his revelations.  This guy reads, that's why he knows so much.  He has the instincts of a real scholar, a real historian.  He can back up what he says with convincing evidence because he really does know what he's talking about. 

I've lost trust in some other Christian watchmen who rely only on a few current sources, have no sense of context, no sense of history, no "time" to read and therefore behave like a loose cannon shooting everything in sight without discrimination.  It's appalling, for instance, to hear the great men of Christian history and even today's church denounced as "devils" because this ignorant Christian teacher knows nothing about them other than a few quotes he's picked up from some source he doesn't question.   Calvin, Luther, "devils?"  I've read a great deal in both of them and it is clear from their writings that they were able to bring about the Reformation because they saw through the evils of Roman Catholicism and put Protestantism on the solid rock of the Bible.   You can make anybody out to be a devil if you know only a little about some mistakes they made. 

But it's also possible you are trusting in lying propaganda about them and not knowing it.  In this world things are NOT as they seem, and after listening to Chris Pinto for a while and seeing his films I'm more convinced of that than ever. 

On the subject of the Protestant Reformers, he did a series of radio shows in September of last year showing how they've been seriously and irresponsibly misrepresented by some writers today, including Dave Hunt who is otherwise often a good teacher.  [the link isn't exact, you have to find the September shows yourself].  Pinto, who does not identify himself as a Calvinist, nevertheless recognizes that what Calvin taught about predestination and free will that is so often vilified these days is in fact Biblical.  In fact some of us who do identify ourselves as Calvinist do so only because we also recognize that fact -- our real authority is not Calvin at all but the Bible.  I HIGHLY recommend this series of radio shows, some six or eight on this subject. 

And don't dismiss out of hand the possibility that some of this anti-Reformation propaganda is being engineered by Rome.  I've never been much into conspiracy interpretations of history -- usually encountered as wild assertions with little actual proof --  but the evidence Pinto musters for a complex network of interwoven conspiracies that all ultimately derive from Rome through the Jesuits is staggeringly convincing.   Although I view Rome as the seat of the Antichrist as did the Reformers, and working constantly to spread their influence in the world, I don't usually think of this as operating on so many levels and with such organized intent as Pinto shows is the case.   Influencing the minds of Bible-believing Christians is a constant objective for instance, of course under cover, without revealing the Jesuitical source.  They are master propagandists.  Undermining the Protestant Reformation was the original aim of the Jesuit order on its formation. 

Almost everything Pinto discusses comes back to Rome eventually.  All the wars, Hitler and Nazism, Vietnam, waterboarding.  Fox News.  Apostate movements in the Protestant churches.  The Masons the mule carriers for Rome?  The American Revolution a Roman conspiracy?  Along with carefully constructed lies to deny such involvements including recent denials of the Inquisition as ever having existed.  I can't even absorb all this.  I keep having to listen over and over just to get the basics into my head.

When the final Antichrist comes he'll have the Roman Church behind him just as Hitler did, of course with a lot of disinformation and decoys to keep this from being clearly recognized, and a huge huge network of interlocking conspiracies going back centuries and tunneling from the Vatican like a dizzying maze of gopher burrows. 

Don't take my word for it.  I can barely keep all this stuff straight.  Just go hear Chris Pinto.

What I really don't get about the Rapture

There's more than one thing about it I have a problem with, but the main thing is that I don't see how there can be two different saved bodies of people, two different churches, a church that is raptured before the unfolding of the end times scenarios that are obviously in the wings right now, but others who get saved during those events. It's not so much that I don't see certain scriptural evidences for such an interpretation, although of course the stronger those are the more I'm likely to be persuaded, but it's more that it makes no sense to me that the Church would be with the Lord celebrating the Blessed Hope, safe and secure with Him forever, His Elect, His Bride, His redeemed, while others will come to be saved through terrible sufferings during that same time period and not be part of that company. I really can't make sense of this.

Unfortunately I have no idea who to consult in the hope of answering this question. I've heard teaching from all the different camps and I'm still MOSTLY pre-trib in spite of my questions -- in fact I'm YEARNING for it to happen SOON -- except for worrying about unsaved friends and family. I COULD go back to being post-trib or pre-mill or Rapture = Second Coming except that the last teaching I heard on that was so cock-sure assertive about what I know is not all that clearcut I figured that teacher has WAY too much confidence in his own powers of understanding and not likely to be the one to resolve my doubts.

===========
Sat 4/7 Heard a radio show on the book of Revelation this morning in which the question above was raised, sort of, and the only answer that was given was that the speakers believe people will be saved after the Rapture, period, no scripture, no consideration of the concern about how there can be two completely separate bodies of believers in Christ, and how we are to understand whatever the distinctions are, etc. Just that the 144,000 Jews that are sealed are evangelists so people will be saved. Oh well.

Enter Stage Left, Right, Above, Beneath, Front, Rear and Center: Antichrist

Seems like just recently, a matter of mere months maybe, I've become aware of developments in the world and the church that are all moving toward the final stage setting for the Day of the Lord, the last act of the great drama of Planet Earth. The internet radio ministries I've linked on the right margin are my main sources of this information and anyone who wants to follow all this only needs to go and listen to as many recent broadcasts as you can. Also go to You Tube and watch Chris Pinto's films. [Actually, older broadcasts are as good as the recent ones].

I get the feeling that these events themselves have in fact been proliferating, and that may well be the case. It's like watching the stage hands rushing to get the props in place just before the curtain goes up on the final Act. But on the other hand it may only be that I've become aware of them. The movies by Chris Pinto, for instance, have been out for years and deal with historical events going back centuries, but I've only been learning about them recently.

The main movement is in the direction of the Catholic Church: "Protestants" who are really Catholics (the Archibishop of Canterbury), and Protestants who are leaning toward Rome. Emergent Church tending in that direction. Glenn Beck is a Mormon but there are Christians who say he is a Christian nevertheless, David Barton being one of them. Beck has been getting together with the Pope, and his wide audience gets a pretty heavy dose of ecumenical philosophy, the hope of bringing all the religions under one worldwide religion. Which will of course be headed by Rome.

I've been hearing a lot about the Jesuits recently, who are engaged in all kinds of intrigues on behalf of Rome, political as well as church-related, who apparently even pretend to be Protestants, or whatever seems to be required, all in the service of bringing as many as possible under the Pope.

I've believed for years that the papacy is the Antichrist system. I haven't been completely convinced that the final Antichrist will be the last Pope though that is still a very strong possibility* -- at the very least the Vatican is going to have some kind of dominating position in the finale of Planet Earth -- but lately I feel like I'm watching the machinery in operation to bring about a one world religion with the Pope at its head, whereas previously I just figured it would all come together somehow or other.

What we thought were solid trustworthy Protestant organizations have shown themselves to be soft on Rome. Billy Graham used to seem like one of the most solid evangelicals, but it became apparent years ago that he's been feeding people who convert in his crusades back into the Roman Church if they identify that as their church, directly consigning them to Hell. Then there's Pat Robertson. It's not that I'm a great fan of his but he's a prominent evangelical, and I recently heard a snippet of a program of his in which he claims that the Catholic Church is a Christian Church.

He's also a Mason, and that's another line of influence on the church and the world that I've been learning a lot about recently.

Maybe the most startling revelation for me recently was that George Washington was not only a high-degree Mason -- it's not that I didn't already know that but I've learned a lot more about implications of that fact -- but converted to Catholicism hours before he died.

Then there is this recent revelation that Wycliffe Bible Translators, which works all around the world bringing the gospel to unreached peoples by giving them a Bible in their own language, has been changing the wording of key theological tenets of the Bible in order to make it more acceptable to Muslims. Not "Son of God" for instance because Muslims always think in carnal terms about that. Well, of course, so does EVERYBODY who doesn't believe the word of God. The virgin birth was one of the main objections of the American founders, as it is for oh lots and lots of Bible rejectors today as well, figuring in most debates with the big name atheists for instance. The Mormons simply blasphemously embrace the carnal notion of God being a man who physically impregnated Mary. So there's no excuse for changing the wording, it only falsifies the gospel message and in doing that they deprive the Muslims of the true gospel, the gospel that people down the centuries have been willing to die for, the gospel that would actually save them. This way the Muslims can consider themselves to be "followers of Isa," their false version of Jesus, and continue in their Muslim rituals, and not put themselves in a compromised position within their Muslim community. By doing this, the once-venerable missionary organization is now making the sort of soft converts to a lifeless "Christianity" that would easily put themselves under Rome. That hasn't been suggested in anything I've heard so far, it simply hits me as a likely development as so many other political and religious streams are flowing in that direction these days.

Then there is our President Obama with his leftist and Muslim affiliations, and most of all his lack of a verifiable claim to be qualified for his office, the latest indication in that direction coming through a mailman from twenty years ago who recognized him as the "black foreign student" the Ayers family were putting through school, who also told him that he was one day going to be President of the United States. He also ran for office with a chorus of messianic type adoration behind him (which I blogged on at Faith's Corner). Doesn't scripture say the Antichrist will come to power by "intrigue?"

And then there are all the secret societies I couldn't take terribly seriously until Chris Pinto's films put enough historical fact to their existence and their nefarious plots to convince me. The Masons first of all, the Illuminati -- oh you can just name the usual suspects, they're all there and all working in cahoots to bring the world under a "benevolent" dictator or one world political system and a universal religion. The Jesuits are a secret society too.

Oh and check out the "Georgia Guidestones" if you want to see the plan spelled out in so many words. Number one suggests a lot of bloodshed.

And then there are the warnings of a possible imminent disaster in the US I also recently blogged on. And the Middle East situation COULD soon turn into World War III which is also on the agenda.

We're almost eleven years from 9/11 and I'm not up on God's timetable for His judgments against a nation or at least against America, but the only way we could escape would be with a massive movement of repentance by the churches and that isn't happening.

Come soon, Lord Jesus.

==================================
* According to an ancient prophecy by "Malachy" the last Pope is to be the very next one, after the current Benedict, and he's to be called "Peter the Roman" (which I blogged on some time back at Faith's Corner). Such a prophecy doesn't have to be taken seriously, of course, but it's interesting to consider that there might be truth to it, and the timing is certainly right for the emergence of the Antichrist, which makes this Peter the Roman a fine candidate for the role. I understand that the Catholic Church has been trying to spin this prophecy to claim that this Peter the Roman may well be the Antichrist but that in that case he'd have become Pope through the machinations of anti-Catholic Masons. However, the prophecy itself makes Peter out to be a hero who will suffer great persecution, and Malachy was a good Catholic himself.

Israel & Replacement Theology: "What about 'forever' don't you understand?"

I think I've made it clear that politically I'm on Israel's side and consider the "Palestinian" claims to be trumped up by the leftists.

However, I'm not as clear on the theological question of "replacement theology." I do know that some who are on Israel's side object strenuously to the idea, understanding it to mean Israel has been replaced by the Church, thereby negating Israel's claims to the land. They base much of their argument on the scripture which says the covenant God made with Israel was everlasting.

Gen 13:15 For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.

Gen 17:8 And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

The relevant passages do read as if the land was given forever, but obviously this can't be since the earth itself isn't to last forever:

2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

I assume they have some way of reconciling this, but it seems to me the only sufficient way of reconciling it is to understand that the everlasting covenant with Abraham didn't refer to the literal physical land but to spiritual Zion:

Hebrews 11:10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker [is] God.

Hebrews 12:22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels.

The New Testament teaches that those who are of faith are children of Abraham and inherit God's covenant with him. The flesh does not inherit, only the spirit. We look to the spiritual Zion, the city whose builder and maker is God, not to earthly Israel.

Just as did Abraham, as Hebrews 11:10 says. He "sojourned" in the "land of promise," living in a tent, never as a resident of the land, never receiving the fulfillment of THAT land, although God had promised it specifically to him, as well as to his descendants. This alone hints that the land is a symbol or a type of a better "land," which the New Testament brings out more clearly.

HOWEVER: Insofar as the promise pointed to the physical land there is no doubt that God did give it to Abraham and his descendants and therefore nobody else has a claim to it. The covenant with Abraham, unlike the covenant that came through Moses, was unbreakable. The Israelites broke the covenant through Moses but the Abrahamic covenant is everlasting and unbroken. So it's perfectly reasonable to argue that the literal physical land of Israel which was given literal geographic boundaries by God, does belong to the Jews. Even though that land isn't going to be everlasting.

But now we are not talking about the heirs of the promise to Abraham, but to "Jacob," ("supplanter, layer of snares", says Strong's Concordance, the descendants of Abraham "after the flesh" and not after the spirit. Jacob was his given name, but God renamed him "Israel" ("prince with God") after he had finally come to the point of complete dependence on God.

Christians, who inherit the heavenly Jerusalem, have no interest in earthly Israel, and that includes saved Jews as well. But scripture speaks of a "time of trouble" for "Jacob" which many interpret to be yet future, and it is "Jacob" who now lives in Israel, earthly Israel of the flesh.

The point is there CAN'T really be a "replacement" of Israel by the Church because these are two different things, or two different levels. The Church is of heavenly Jerusalem and this world is "passing away." HOWEVER, the Old Testament dealt with a literal fleshly people and a literal physical land, and although the fulfillment of the promise of God is in reality a spiritual or heavenly fulfillment, it may well be that God has further plans for Jacob and for earthly Israel. The point would be that the entire earth belongs to God and His dealing with Israel and in fact His whole plan of redemption, are meant to bring honor and glory to Himself on this Planet Earth, even through all the heathen of the world who are at enmity with Him, and THAT part of His plan is not yet finished.

1 John 2:17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

Paul writes poignantly of the temporary blinding of Israel so that the Gentiles might be saved:

Rom 9:2 That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. Rom 9:3 For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:Rom 9:4 Who are Israelites; to whom [pertaineth] the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service [of God], and the promises; Rom 9:5 Whose [are] the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ [came], who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. Rom 9:6 Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they [are] not all Israel, which are of Israel: Rom 9:7 Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, [are they] all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.

Rom 9:8 That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these [are] not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.

Romans 10:1 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. Rom 10:2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

Romans 11:25 For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. Rom 11:26 And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:

And this tells us that besides showing the whole world who He is and that He reigns over all things, He WILL also save "all Israel," and clearly all this is yet future.

But it is ALL tending to this point: Those who are saved are saved to the heavenly Jerusalem. Flesh cannot be saved in its current condition. Those who are not born again, who remain flesh, remain unsaved and can only be destined for the lake of fire.

So all those scenarios I keep running across about an ULTIMATE separate destiny for earthly Israel and the Church just don't make sense. Salvation of Jew and Gentile makes us both part of the Church AND part of the heavenly Jerusalem. It may be that there will be a period -- even the Millennium? -- in which Jesus reigns over earth from earthly Jerusalem -- but this can only be a temporary dispensation.

But then there is also to be a new heaven and a new earth and I've never been sure how to fit all these things together:

Revelation 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

Rev 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

I'd like to see these points addressed by those who defend that point of view.

"Replacement theology," Israel and the Antichrist

Listening this morning to a talk at a conference in Israel, a conference of mostly pro-Palestinian / anti-Israel Christian leftists, in which this talk was apparently the only one from the opposing point of view.

Apparently the leftist Christian position is based on what is called "replacement theology," the idea that the church has replaced Israel, from which theology the leftists get their hatred of Israel, their arguments that Israel is an apartheid state mistreating the Palestinian people who are the true heirs of the land and so on and so forth.

I don't see the connection. The leftist position, Christian or non-Christian, is just obviously wrong historically and ethically quite apart from whatever theology they appeal to.

There never was any Palestinian people, that is an invention of the haters of Israel. The settling of what eventually became the Jewish state began back in the 19th century when the area known as Palestine had no national identity whatever and no population indigenous to it. Mark Twain visited it and described it as a desolate wasteland. There were a few scattered Arabs and there were also some Jews, mostly in Jerusalem, who had been there from time immemorial. If occupation of the land at that time has any bearing on the argument the Jews have a better claim to it than the Arabs.

The Jews who moved into the area from Europe set about building up this desolate wasteland. What became known as the Palestinian people were Arabs from many of the surrounding Arab nations who came to work for the Jews in this building up. As the Jews succeeded in making the area livable they became the targets of growing hostility from the neighboring Arab nations. When these nations declared war on Israel just as it became a state they simultaneously warned the Arabs living there to escape for their own protection. They did escape and they became the refugees that were ultimately renamed "Palestinians." A whole bogus supposed history was bestowed to make them appear to be the legitimate heirs of the land that had become the Israeli state, and I have the impression that some of them even believe their own lie. Their own Arab people would not absorb them but left them as refugees in order to be a thorn in the side of Israel. Attempts to resolve the situation keep failing because the "Palestinians" have always refused whatever concessions Israel has made to their demands for a state. The reason they refuse is that they hate Israel, period, and want Israel gone, period.

I've written about this more in other posts. The point is that the leftists are motivated by hated of Israel and have no legitimate basis for their hatred and their support of this bogus "Palestinian people." What they call apartheid tactics against the Palestinians, such as a wall that keeps them out except at certain guarded checkpoints, are nothing but attempts by Israel to defend themselves from repeated attacks by the "Palestinians," rockets they fire daily into Israel among other acts of hostility. The whole Palestinian / Leftist claim is a big fat lie. Yet somehow they've managed to make most of the world believe it.

But what does any of this have to do with "replacement theology?" Those who argue against this theology, as the speaker does I've been listening to this morning, emphasize the idea that God's covenant with Israel is still in force because it was everlasting, and it's a covenant that entitles them to the land as well as a covenant to make them the people who will bless the whole world as carriers of the word of the true God and His Messiah.

I have to admit that I don't have a thorough understanding of the scriptures in this situation, but from what I think I understand about it I'm not on either side theologically. I could change my mind but for now it goes like this: I do not believe the church has "replaced" Israel, but I do believe the church is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant God made with Israel. We ARE the "new Israel" through the Messiah, the people of God. The Messiah Himself is the fulfiller of the covenants, He is the blessing to the Gentiles God wanted Israel to be. All that is fulfilled. The land promised to Israel is the "other country" Abraham and others looked to according to Hebrews 11, not an earthly land.

This does NOT mean that God doesn't still have a role for Israel the literal physical land. At the very least we know that scripture promises a huge conversion of Jews to Jesus Christ at the very end of time. But beyond that, it is utterly impossible that the Jews could be on the land and it not be God's will, even though they are still not IN God's will themselves. That physical land is clearly going to be the center of the end times scenario that is probably going to play out very soon. It's most likely going to involve a huge war, a bloodbath, out of which will emerge, if he doesn't preside over it from the beginning, a personage known as the Antichrist who will have the worldwide rule that was coveted by the earlier antichrists such as Hitler.

I don't know what to make of the various theologies that give separate roles to the Jews and the Church. I don't see scripture for that myself. I see scripture saying we are one people, Jew and Gentile, we are all the Church and we are all Israel.

And yet it does seem to be that God may have separate dealings with his original chosen people as these end times unfold. I get this probably more from the current world situation and history than from scripture, though I'm sure there is scripture for it, I'm just not adept at exegeting it.

The leftist position is evil, period. Israel is in the defensive position, not the aggressor position. All this is simply setting the stage for the grand finale showdown between Satan and Christ. It's not going to be fun, there will no doubt be millions of martyrs, but the end result will be the worldwide rule of Christ.

No doubt there are plenty of specifics that I'm overlooking, though I think my position is general enough that they won't contradict anything I've said. I could be wrong.

"Replacement theology" is skewed, there is no replacement but there is fulfillment in the Church, which includes both Jew and Gentile. But nothing in this way of looking at it denies the right of Israel to exist, or that the Jews are still God's people in a historical sense, and it certainly doesn't justify the lying claims for this bogus "Palestinian people" which is just an invention of Satan in his neverending quest to destroy God's people and plans. The leftist "Christians" are just going to be part of the Antichrist's worldwide religion in the end.

Coming Soon to a Planet Near You

When the Antichrist comes will he be like the traditional Maitreya, the messiah expected by the Buddhists, who looks like an Asian with kinky African hair?* Or more like a Middle Eastern man as one would expect of the Imam Mahdi, the messiah figure expected by the Muslims and heralded by Ahmadinejad? Which is also what Benjamin Creme's long-heralded Maitreya more or less looks like, as well as a familiar false image of Christ.

Whatever, he's got to be just about to appear. I suppose he'll mostly be known by his occult powers rather than his looks, but his looks must figure in there somewhere.

==============

*The feature of kinky hair plus black skin, which is also a characteristic of many painted Maitreya images, links him to Krishna (which means "black") and most particularly links him all the way back to Nimrod, son of Cush, who was identified by Alexander Hislop in his Two Babylons as the first Antichrist and the type of all the gods of the world since then. Hislop brings it all down to the Roman Catholic Church as the channel for all the old pagan religions, Mystery Babylon. The "Virgin Mary" demon (who has appeared all over the world this last century) is his candidate for The Beast. And the Protestant Reformers identifed the papacy as the Antichrist system. So we have no shortage of sources for the final evil leader of the world, Satan's masterpiece. Whoever it is will no doubt have to be able to unite all the various messiah expectations under one banner somehow or other.

Some of my old posts at Faith's Corner on this general theme are here.

End Times themes on internet radio

I've been listening more often lately to Brannon Howse's Worldview Weekend radio broadcasts, and found this recent interesting series:

...20 similarities between the false church in Nazi Germany that laid the foundation for the acceptance of Hitler and the rising global false church that will lay the foundation for the acceptance of the antichrist.

Howse is a sharp defender of the true gospel against the growing apostasies that have been infecting the churches, including today's tendency for American conservatives to choose political goals over gospel goals, and including the influences of the cults, the Roman church, Mormonism, etc.

He's certainly not the only one sounding the trumpet but for some reason he's been attracting what seems like an unusual amount of hostility. All I can say is good for him.

Another good one on similar subjects is Chris Pinto's Noise of Thunder radio program.

Another is Jan Markell's Understanding the Times broadcasts.

The Rapture scenario continues to elude me

Just a quick report. I'm struggling through Hal Lindsey's book of 1999, Vanished, which was recommended to me as a help to resolve my ongoing inability to settle the questions involving the idea of a premillennial Rapture. Well, it doesn't resolve it. Yet. But I am having a very hard time reading it. Something about the way it is organized makes it hard for me to follow, and he spends too much time, for my purposes anyway, answering other interpretive schemes that don't persuade me at all anyway -- Dominionism and Reconstructionism for instance. For some time I've found the premillennial interpretation to be the best of the field at elucidating the scripture, just not entirely convincing to me yet.

I'm MOSTLY convinced that scripture does describe the return of Jesus in two different sets of terms such that the idea of the Rapture of the Church's occurring separately from His return to earth as conquering king is a reasonable interpretation. That is not completely resolved for me either because I'm not entirely sure which references apply to which event, and there's one that's taken to apply to the Rapture that has the Lord appearing with a "shout" that hardly sounds like a quiet snatching-away of His people. BUT overall the two-stage return of Christ is plausible. And there is precedent for such a division into two in the fact that Jesus' first advent only fulfilled the Suffering Servant prophecies of the Old Testament, leaving the prophecies of his return as triumphant warrior king for the Second Coming, which wasn't clearly understood until after His resxurrection and ascension. So as we approach the last of the last days it seems perfectly reasonable that a more precise outline of His return should also begin to appear, and also to expect that it too won't be fully understood until it is upon us or even later.

Unfortunately it's hard to point to exactly what it is that gives me the most trouble with Lindsey's presentation. Cobra helicopters are the least of the problem though. There is one place Lindsey makes himself utterly untrustworthy it seems to me, when he brings up Jesus' likening the kingdom of heaven to leaven gradually worked throughout a lump. Lindsey simply insists that scripture ONLY uses "leaven" to refer to sin and evil, without explaining how on earth he can treat its use to represent "the kingdom of heaven" in the same way. The Dominionists no doubt misuse that passage to support their cause but that's no excuse to try to make it refer to something else it obviously doesn't refer to. That lost me completely and shakes my faith in Lindsey's thinking. But it's a minor point in the overall interpretive scheme.

One thing I've always had a problem with concerning Rapture scenarios that put a great emphasis on the completion of God's dealings with Israel, is how to view the covenant of the land God gave to Abraham. Certainly it was given without condition and forever, but there is also the passage in Hebrews where we are told that Abraham was not looking to an earthly land but to an eternal abode -- unless I've utterly misunderstood that passage.

Hebrews 11:8-16: By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as [in] a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker [is] God. Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, [so many] as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of [them], and embraced [them], and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that [country] from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better [country], that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

I see present-day Israel on the earthly land and can't help but attribute that to God's own purposes -- what other option is there? But does that make that earthly land the fulfillment of the covenant promise? Aren't Christians also "heirs of Abraham" and as such also heirs of that unconditional covenant, and doesn't that put the covenant on a New Testament footing that changes how we are to understand it? We are to read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, that's our primary directive for Biblical exegesis.

Yet it's not impossible to my mind that some -- a few -- of the promises to the Jews may not be completely fulfilled in the New Covenant and remain to be fulfilled -- or that there is a double fulfillment in the Church and earthly Israel both. Of course I can't go with any interpretation that seems to imply that the Jews are not to be saved by the same means as all the rest of us, through the death of Christ. Lindsey doesn't seem to make that error but he's a tad ambiguous on that point, and others of his basic persuasion do make that error.

One thing I am very sure of is that there remains a "week" or seven years left over from Daniel's prophecy of the time required to completely fulfill God's plan for Israel, the "seventieth week of Daniel" left after the first 69 were fulfilled in the first coming of Christ. I'm just not completely sure how to understand its purpose. Apparently it includes, or is synonymous with, the Day of the Lord, the time of the Antichrist, a time of unprecedented evil on the earth, also known as the Great Tribulation, during which time the vast majority of believers will be martyred. This idea of the fulfillment of God's plan for israel is hardly a happy one.

This period is also foreshadowed in Isaiah 61, 1 and 2, the first verse of which Jesus read in the synagogue to announce His Messiahship, leaving out the second verse which refers to the Day of the Lord, now clearly to be connected with His second coming:

Isaiah 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD [is] upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to [them that are] bound; 2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;

It appears that it isn't primarily the Rapture itself that's the problem for me, it's the whole scenario in which the Rapture occurs, and especially what supposedly happens AFTER the Rapture. Of course a different understanding of all that could change my acceptance of the timing of the Rapture itself too.

But overall I'm still where I was when I began this book by Lindsey. Well, I'll keep reading and perhaps reread the book, since I don't feel I'm getting anything very clear out of it yet.

The "Locusts" of Revelation 9, what are they?

As I came to the end of Tal Brooke's Riders of the Cosmic Circuit I turned to a book by Hal Lindsey, Vanished, that had been recommended to me as possibly able to resolve my ongoing vacillations about a Pretribulation Rapture. I wouldn't ordinarily have sought out a book by Lindsey because he's so often ridiculed for some extreme positions he's taken, but I figure it's worth a try since I appreciate the ministry that recommended it.

One of his far-out positions was his interpretation of the "locusts" of Revelation 9 as possibly Cobra helicopters. This seemed so nutty to me too that I pretty much gave up on Hal Lindsey as any kind of trustworthy exegete of the Bible.

Rev 9:1 And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment [was] as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

And the shapes of the locusts [were] like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads [were] as it were crowns like gold, and their faces [were] as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as [the teeth] of lions. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings [was] as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power [was] to hurt men five months. And they had a king over them, [which is] the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue [is] Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath [his] name Apollyon.

Lindsey mentions this in Vanished:

The most common criticism leveled against me by my adversaries is that I see "Cobra helicopters" as possibly being described in Revelation 9:5-10. This was presented as an opinion in my book The Apocalypse Code, in which I gave a detailed explanation for it. Whatever this passage means, it is a composite desription from may different things that is obviously intended to be symbolic. There is no insect, beast, or man in nature that fits what is described. Ample evidence can be found within the Book of Revelation to establish that John wrote about things he saw and heart while projected into the future. I believe John actually saw and heart things by Direct Divine revdelation that wree centuries future to his own time and still future to us. He was commanded to write about what he had seen. He therefore had to describe very advanced scientific creations of a much lateral time ihn terms of his first-century knowledge and experience. This is my opinion, and I believe it makes good sense. If you don't buy that, it's okay with me; show me something better.

There seems to be a problem here with an assumption that what John saw was necessarily an "advanced scientific creation." That's not the first thing that comes to my mind when I read the passage. I think of some kind of demonic creature from the deep abyss with special characteristics and special powers. I haven't read Hal Lindsey's argument for helicopters, though, and perhaps he should be given the benefit of the doubt that he finds something in the scriptural passage that fits his interpretation of a machine of some sort.

But then I as I picked up his book today and reread this description it reminded me of something I'd just read in Tal Brooke's Riders of the Cosmic Circuit that might actually vindicate Lindsey's interpretation somewhat, not entirely but somewhat.

Eckart Flother is describing some strange supernatural occurrences he experienced in Poona, India, at Rajneesh's ashram.

"And I was getting paranoid after some time. I was not so much getting paranoid, I was asking the people around me, 'Do you see this?' ... And the peak event was when I was standing with several people and we were going to cross the street. And there was something, an 'Entity,' I don't know what it was..." He laughed in irony.

"Go on," I said.

"It looked like a mixture of a big truck but with a lot of lights approaching at high speed, two hundred kilometers per hour, or about one hundred and twenty miles per hour. It also looked a little bit like a dragon. And this entity or whatever came down the road like ... 'whhhhshhhh' ... and I was standing there ... "

I had to ask just to make sure, "Were you stoned at the time?"

"No, I was straight," Eckart replied in earnest. "I was stoned occasionally, but in all these major experiences I was straight".

"When you say Entity, it was alive?" John and I asked.

"It was very tangible and in the first place the image was like an old locomotive, chugging, but the interesting thing was a lot of light all over it."

"You never find anything on an Indian street going two hundred kilometers an hour. That's an impossibility." My years in India were surfacing.

"And you see the interesting thing was it was like ... normally Indian roads are full of people ... and this street was empty, a perfect set-up."

"What was the feeling you had when it went by."

"It was a mixture of entertainment and being a bit frightened... I couldn't see it properly. But nothing flies down a narrow INdian road at two hundred kilometers an hour. It is physically impossible. This was very tangible... So I had the feeling that something was going on, especially at the Poona ashram."

"It's an evil city," I said. "A lot of these gods in temples actually look like locomotives. I remember the huge Kali form in the temple in Calcutta ... looked just like a locomotive. And the Bible speaks of the forms that idols are based on as being elemental spirits that are demonic."

Certainly what Eckart had seen fit the pattern. I was convinced, with Eckart and John, that it was a rare demonic manifestation. It sounded like a massive collective entity.... [p. 180-1]

As, in a way, do the "locusts" of Revelation 9, or in their case separate collective entities, each made up of multiple parts.

And although I don't see much of a mechanical component in those locusts it's interesting that Eckart's entity had such a component, first seeming like a large truck, and also like a locomotive, but it was also like a dragon and had a quality that suggests the whole thing was alive in some sense.

It's also possibly relevant in this regard that Ezekiel describes in his first chapter a vision he had of four creatures that together could appear to embody something like a chariot with four wheels, and the wheels have a living spirit in them.

So if Lindsey is right to find anything resembling a Cobra helicopter in the locusts, it would most likely not be the actual machine itself but something along these lines, a living creature or composite living creature with attributes of a machine as part of the composite.

And of course all this also reminds me of speculations about the increase in UFO phenomena as a clue to a likely last days major UFO invasion of sorts in which they are to contribute to the mass delusion of the Antichrist, and probably make a handy excuse to explain away the Rapture of the Church if it does occur. While as far as I know nobody has yet suggested the UFO "vehicles" themselves could be alive in the sense the truck entity appeared to be or Ezekiel's wheels, the fact that they don't behave according to any known laws of physics, and that we (Christians) know the whole UFO phenomenon to be a demonic manifestation, makes something like that also a possibility -- a composite demonic creation of some sort, as Tal suggests.

Such possibilities make my old bones ache to get off this planet, but I can't be very happy thinking of all the people who may have to experience such demonic manifestations and worse if they live into the very last of the last days.

The Enlightenment Experience, Three Antichrist Gurus of recent times and the rescue of two from their clutches by Christ

Finally read Riders of the Cosmic Circuit which comprises Tal Brooke's studies of three of the most famous Hindu gurus of recent times, also known as "god-men" --Sai Baba (1926-2011) who was Tal's own guru for two years in India up to 1971, and for whom he was the premier Western spokesman during that time, Swami Muktananda (1908-1982) who was very big in California in the 70s, and Rajneesh (1931-1990), the notorious guru of sex, murder and mayhem who was finally kicked out of America after four years of terrorizing an Oregon town and went back to India where he died five years later.

The main subject of the book is the experience of "Enlightenment" which is what makes a guru a guru. Brooke claims that this experience is the same across all the different religions which promote such a state, in spite of different methods and different terminology. In fact the work of the student or initiate in these religions is all geared to coming ultimately to that final realization. It is generally described in terms of loss of ego, loss of self, the "no-self" experience, merging with the Self which is God, and the like. Its attainment is accompanied by supernatural power, and the approach to it can hold a variety of supernatural experiences both beautiful and terrifying.

The book is convincing at least for these three gurus that Enlightenment is probably a state of Perfect Possession, that is, a state in which the personality or soul of the original person has been completely abdicated while the body becomes inhabited by some sort of "entity" that takes its place. All three were described by others as dramatically changed after their respective enlightenment experiences, and all three were described by some family members as seeming "possessed." And the work of all three in their respective ashrams among their respective followers became marked by evil practices, both of sex and violence, Rajneesh apparently reaching some sort of pinnacle of perfection of evil.

It's interesting that the personality must be PERSUADED to abandon the body, and that's what much of the teaching of all these disciplines seems to promote. The wonderful understanding that will occur when you completely surrender your ego or self is the enticement, and there are plenty of bliss experiences on the way to keep the student motivated.

As Tal Brooke notes, such gurus are antichrists and this must be the formula for the final Antichrist to come, in which a personality is to be completely replaced by Satan himself. All such possessions that occur before the end period are more or less trial runs for the final one.

Tal himself stopped just short of the experience of Enlightenment, having repeatedly "smelled" evil in the endeavor, puzzled why this should be so. Aren't gurus supposed to be "holy men," the equivalent of Jesus Christ? During this period of his growing awareness of the evil behind his chosen teacher, he was driven to desperation in his inability to understand it.

I had discovered an absolutely Satanic thing operating behind Sai Baba's veneer. Now I was desperate. I crouched on a massive boulder on a hillside overlooking Baba's main ashram in Puttaparthi. My love affair with Vedanta was ending. I was dissolving inside, dying inside ...In my perplexity I was willing to look anywhere for an answer. There was one source of revelation I had avoided.

In my desperation, I laid a Bible on a hillside rock -- a book I had long ago 'transcended.' Now in an act of faith, I threw open the pages. You could call it a kind of miracle at the time. What I read answered a need so deep I cannot explain it. For by then I was in a blackened state of mind best described as occult desolation. In trying to figure out this creature in the red robe, claiming to be God out here on the Indian desert, I was totally lost for an answer, bewildered.

Imagine what I felt when the Bible fell open to Matthew 24:23-24 (NIV ). It was Christ himself talking about a future age in our world. And suddenly a new perspective took shape for me.

At that time 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 appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect, if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time.

I looked down at Baba's green prayer hall below and thought,

"That's it, that's what Sai Baba is, a miracle-working antichrist." [p.161]

Soon afterward, partly through a missionary couple in India, he gave himself to Christ and has spent the rest of his life educating people about the false teachings of the various Hindu gurus and the growth of the occult as we approach the very last days.

In the book he also recounts the experience of Eckart Flother, a German disciple of Rajneesh who had a similar escape through a miracle or revelation of Christ some years later.

We were in a Los Angeles outdoor cafe, sitting at an open shaded table, away from onlookers. It was a warm January day in 1983. Eckart, who had been with Rajneesh for many months in Poona but who then suddenly fled, was now meeting Sai Baba's one-time top Western disciple, namely me, who had also fled his guru. And John Weldon, an author and friend, was with us at the table as a witness. I had heard about the incredible incident that happened to Eckart in Poona but now I wanted to hear it from him. One thing that had inspired him, after what he had just gone through, was reading about a sijmilar event in Lord of the Air, the abridged European version of my book Avatar of Night. Our meeting was intense, charged with energy and feeling. Eckart was recalling a powerful supernatural incident of the highest order of magnitude -- an incident that changed him forever...

It was one of those typically warm, humid Poona nights. I was alone in my hotel room. As you would say, sober as a judge, feeling alert. It was Auguswt 1979. It was one of those nights when everything is covered with mosquitoes and nobody can sleep. At any rate I was sitting in my hotel room reading and writing. Perfectly normal...

All of a sudden in the left-hand corner of my hotel room I saw a bigger than man-sized brilliant light. The sheer power, sheer presence was awesome. Rajneesh could not hold a candle to this. I felt instinctively that it was Jesus Christ ...

"Had anyone been seeing you who was a Christian?" I asked Eckart. "Or handing you material on the subject, or anything like that?"

Absolutely not. At any rate all of a sudden I heard a mighty voice saying to me 'I want you to become my disciple.' I was absolutely shaken to bits. I knew right away that this was Jesus calling me...[p. 173-4]

When he makes an appointment to tell Rajneesh about it he has an impression of evil emanating from his guru, and Rajneesh seems to shrink back in fear from the very mention of Christ. But he released Eckart with the words "Enjoy it" and that was the end of his following of Rajneesh.

There is more to this conversation in which Eckart details some of the cruel and criminal acts done under Rajneesh and he and Tal agree that their gurus are indeed Antichrists.

Eckart seems to have written a booklet about Rajneesh that is mentioned on a few websites but I can't find a description of it or a way to acquire it. Amazon doesn't have it. His name is variously written with an umlaut over the o, or as Floether. He is a business management consultant.

What Tal Brooke says on pp 160-61 pretty much sums up his observations throughout the book:

Curiously, when the heavy-hitting gurus, the Riders, emerged from the Explosion [another term he uses for Enlightenment], close assoicates and family usually used the term "possession" in describing the change that they saw. Rajneesh prepares his highest adepts by readying them emotionally to do the same thing -- sink into the infinite abyss, and drop away and keep dropping away. His words are a juggling act. Along with this comes the admonition, 'Don't worry about what fills you or enters you. Let it happen. Surrender. Lose your identity forever.'

The only scripture on earth that deals with this phenomenon is the Holy Bible. Period. It talks about massive evil intelligences operating behind the scenes of our world. It talks about possession. It has live historical instances of demonic possession and exorcism.

But there is also a super-class in this group whose possession is different -- it is a Perfect POssession and the consciousness within the possessed is many levels beyond the standard possessor demons. This was all a revelation to me in INdia ten years ago as I searched desperately for a category in which to put this phenomenon. Suddenly I noticed that this category of creatures repeatedly appears in the Bible's pages. The Bible even predicts, in its prophecy, that one day the world would be full of these creatures. What are they? Antichrists, claiming to be God. Their appearance and reign on the earth was prophesied to precede the Return of CHrist. Why had I not seen it before?

A Rough Ramble through a Pre-Trib Rapture Argument

This is the first part of a three-part presentation by Jack Kelley of his logic defending the End Times scenario that begins with the Rapture of the Church.

Seven Things You Have To Know
There are seven pieces of information that are essential to understanding End Times Prophecy. These seven things are the building blocks for the strong foundation we want.

They are,
1) The Sequence of Major End Time Events,
2) The Destiny of the Three Components of Humanity,
3) The Purpose and Length of the Great Tribulation,
4) The Purpose of the Rapture,
5) The Conditions Surrounding the 2nd Coming,
6) The Purpose and Length of the Millennium, and
7) Eternity.

Once you’ve learned them, these seven things will help you avoid the mistakes that have thrown others off the track. Call it perspective or overview or whatever you want, this combination of facts will give you the ability to put all the prophetic verses in the Bible into their proper context. Let’s get started.

1) The Sequence Of Major End Times Events
First is knowing what happens and when. The study of prophecy gets really confusing if you don’t know the sequence in which major End Times events will occur. Actually their order is very logical, and once you learn it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t see it before. The best way to figure it out is to perform what the business world sometimes calls a back scheduling exercise. It involves going to the very end of a process and identifying the final outcome. Then you list all the things that have to happen to produce that outcome. Then you put them in reverse order, backing into the present. It’s simpler than it sounds, and much simpler in prophecy than in business because there are many fewer events to organize. We’ll list the major events first, then we’ll organize them.

Almost everyone knows about the 2nd Coming and Eternity, and many also have heard of the Rapture of the Church and the Great Tribulation. But there’s also the Millennial Kingdom, Daniel’s 70th Week, and the Battles of Ezekiel 38-39, Psalm 83 and Isaiah 17; a total of nine major events yet to come. Now let’s organize them, beginning with the final outcome and working back toward the beginning. As it is with most lists, the order in which some events will occur is obvious while others are less so, and at first some don’t seem to fit any place at all. We’ll order the obvious ones first.

What Are We Waiting For?
We all think of Eternity as the final outcome, and so starting at the end means we begin there. But the last major event described in any detail in the Bible is the Kingdom Age or Millennium. It’s the Lord’s 1000 year reign on Earth, which is distinguished from and precedes Eternity. The very last chapter of Revelation describes trees on either side of the River of Life bearing a different fruit every month. That means time still exists, and Eternity by definition is the absence of time. We’ll talk more about that later. For now let’s just say that Eternity can’t happen till the Millennium is over.

The Millennium obviously can’t begin till after the Second Coming, because that’s when the Lord returns to establish it. And according to Matt. 24:29-30 the Second Coming won’t happen till the end of the Great Tribulation. And that can’t happen till the anti-Christ stands in the Temple in Israel declaring himself to be God. (2 Thes. 2:4) That’s the event Jesus warned Israel to look for as the Great Tribulation’s opening salvo. He called it “The Abomination of Desolation” in Matt. 24:15-21. Daniel 9:27 indicates it will happen in the middle of the last seven year period, which scholars call Daniel’s 70th Week.

But the Abomination can’t happen until there’s a Temple. There hasn’t been a Temple in Israel since 70AD and there won’t be one until the Jews officially decide they need one. They won’t need one until God reinstates their Old Covenant relationship because the Temple’s only purpose is to worship Him according to Old Covenant requirements.

This will signal the beginning of Daniel’s 70th week. The 70th Week can’t begin until the Battle of Ezekiel 38-39 is won because God will use that battle to awaken Israel and reinstate His covenant with them. In Romans 11:25 Paul said Israel has been hardened in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in, a reference to the rapture of the Church, after which Israel will be saved. That means the rapture has to happen before the Battle of Ezekiel 38.

You Got That?
So far when we put the Sequence of Major Events in its proper order, it looks like this:

The Rapture of the Church,

The Battle of Ezekiel 38,

Daniel’s 70th week begins,

The Great Tribulation,

The 2nd Coming,

The Millennium,

Eternity.

To those who read Scripture as it’s written, only two of the events in this sequence are subject to debate as to timing. These are the Rapture of the Church and the Battle of Ezekiel 38, the first two on our list. They’re the ones I said are less obvious.

The problem with all of this is that all he's done is organize HIS OWN INTERPRETATION of those scriptures, that is, he's ASSUMING his own interpretation as fact, he isn't even suggesting that he's going to try to prove any of it, or that any of it applies at all to the end times period. It may be useful for helping someone understand what the pre-trib rapture is based on, and it does help get an overview of the scriptures that are usually taken to apply to the end times, but in itself such an arrangement isn't evidence for his interpretation.

So lets find out why they have to be where I’ve placed them in the sequence. Maintaining our back schedule mentality, we’ll begin with Ezekiel’s battle and work back to the Rapture.

“And I will set my glory among the nations, and all the nations shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid on them. The house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God, from that day forward.

Then they shall know that I am the LORD their God, because I sent them into exile among the nations and then assembled them into their own land. I will leave none of them remaining among the nations anymore. And I will not hide my face anymore from them, when I pour out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, declares the Lord GOD.” (Ezek 39:21-22, 28-29)

The Lord has declared in no uncertain terms that He’s going to use Ezekiel’s battle to spiritually awaken His people and call them to Israel from all over the world. This will result in the reinstatement of their Old Covenant relationship, reviving Daniel’s long dormant “70-Weeks” prophecy for its final seven years and requiring that a Temple be constructed. Without one there’s no way for them to keep His covenant.This was proven once before in history during the Babylonian captivity. When Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the 1st Temple, Israel ceased to exist. But as soon as Cyrus the Persian defeated Babylon and freed the Jews, they returned to Israel and began building a Temple before they did anything else. Without a Temple there’s no sacrifice for sin, and without that sacrifice, Jews cannot approach God.

However, to reinstate the Old Covenant system after Christ has come, who is the Perfect Once-for-all Sacrifice, is to commit blasphemy. It may be that the temple will be rebuilt - that's how the scripture reads to me too, and that sacrifices will be reinstated, but this casual way of talking about it as if it were just a different theology than Christianity, different but equal in some sense, is wrong. If these things happen they have to be regarded as Antichrist in themselves, in fact the perfect setting for the Antichrist to present himself in the temple.

Both the Old and New Testaments refer to a Temple in Israel at the End of the Age. The only reason for a Temple is to perform Old Covenant ordinances. But building one today would cause such an uproar that no one in his right mind would consider it.

Only a unified demand from the people of Israel accompanied by quiet acceptance from their Moslem neighbors would make the construction of a Temple even thinkable. Sound impossible? Ezekiel’s battle results in both a Jewish nation re-awakened to the presence of God in their national life and an utterly defeated Moslem attack force in no position to resist. The perfect conditions will finally exist to start building. For these reasons, Ezekiel’s battle has to take place on the threshold of Daniel’s 70th week. Now why does the Rapture of the Church have to precede Ezekiel’s battle?

Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. (Romans 11:25)

Reborn first in unbelief (Ezek. 37:8) the Bible tells us Israel will remain partially estranged from God until the gentile Church reaches its full complement (predetermined number) and arrives at its destination. (The Greek word translated “fullness” in Romans 11:25 was a nautical term often used to describe the full complement of crew and cargo necessary to accomplish a ship’s mission. The ship couldn’t sail till those requirements were met. The one translated “come in” means to arrive at a designated place.)

Then the veil will be pulled back as God reveals Himself to them again. As we saw above, He will use Ezekiel’s battle to begin this by renewing the Old Covenant with them, later transitioning Israel from the Old Covenant to the New toward the end of the Great Tribulation (Zech 12:10). Remember, if they didn’t go back to the Old covenant first, they wouldn’t need a Temple. He’s picking them up where they left off.

This is somewhat plausible, the problem is in the attitude that gives any sort of theological standing to the Old Testament sacrificial system.

After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written,

‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.’ (Acts 15:13-18)

It was about 20 years after the cross. The controversy of the day was whether Gentiles had to become Jews before they could become Christians. And if not, what would become of Israel? In effect, the Lord’s brother James explained to the Apostles and others present at the Council of Jerusalem that Israel was being temporarily set aside while God focused on the Church. After He had taken this “people for His name” (Christians) from among the Gentiles he would return and rebuild His Temple. The Greek words translated taken means to carry something away or remove it from its place, so the passage implies that He would take the Church somewhere and then come back to rebuild the Temple, restore Israel, and give what’s left of mankind one final chance to seek Him.

These three Bible prophecies make it clear that as the End of the Age approaches, God will begin preparing Israel to be His once more. But He won’t be exclusively focused on them until He has finished building the Church and has taken us to our appointed place. And where is that? In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. (John 14:2-3) (He didn’t promise to come back to be with us here where we are, but to take us there, where He is.) After that He would see to Israel’s reawakening and the construction of their Temple.

Throughout Scripture, the Lord seems to be involved with either Israel or the Church, but never both at the same time. James bears this out in his pronouncement regarding the Church in Acts 15. All the leaders of the early church now knew that once God had accomplished His goals with the church, He would turn again to Israel, and that would signal the end of the Church Age.

There are two critical points to remember here. The first is that the Church didn’t end the Age of Law, but only interrupted it 7 years short of its scheduled completion. Those seven years, called the 70th Week of Daniel, have to be fulfilled to complete the Old Covenant.

THIS makes no sense. Christ completed the Old Covenant. If there are seven years left for the whole story to be completed it isn't the Law that will be completed.

It keeps coming to me on the fringes of my mind that the whole point of the last seven years is the fullness of evil, or of the "mystery of iniquity." There is nothing left of the plan of salvation to be fulfilled except the crowning fulfillment of Christ's return. The 70th week of Daniel is a time of great evil, the time of the Antichrist, the time of his short triumph followed by the time of God's vengeance before the Lord Jesus returns. Many of the events having to do with Israel that Kelley is discussing here could be part of that, but only as expressions of the final playing out of evil, not God's covenant.

And the second is that the Old and New covenants, as practiced in Israel and the Church, are theologically incompatible, and therefore the two can only be on Earth at the same time while Israel is out of covenant.

"Theologically incompatible? Todays's Talmud-based JUDAISM is incompatible with Christianity, but it's also incompatible with Old Testament religion! Again, the Old Testament was FULFILLED in the New. The "theological incompatibility" is merely the difference between the Type and the Reality. The Type was the rituals and ceremonies of Old Testament religion, foreshadowing the Reality, who is Christ, who has come. The Reality fulfills the Type, there is nothing left over.

I do agree that the 70th week of Daniel remains unfulfilled, but this idea that its purpose has to do with the Old Covenant remaining to be "completed" makes no sense. It IS complete, it was completed in CHRIST, Who was the subject of all of it from beginning to end, which is said in many ways in the New Testament.

For Israel to return to the Lord, the Church has to be gone.

This makes no sense either. Israel's return to the Lord would be in becoming part of the Church.

For this reason, the rebirth of Israel in 1948 and the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967 are seen as the most important signs of all that the End of the Age is upon us.

And I also see these events very important in relation to Biblical prophecy, perhaps even fulfillment of prophecies of restoration, but I can't see it as anything but a fulfillment of Jewish WRONG IDEAS about the whole meaning of their religion, like it's their fleshly misunderstandings that have yet to play out to their final completion. Their religion is in itself Antichrist. If many are to be saved in the last days they will be saved entirely OUT OF their false religion.

Also, there are two events we haven’t put into the sequence yet, and that’s because they aren’t easy to locate there. These are the battles of Psalm 83 and Isaiah 17. When Israel wins these two battles all their next door enemies will be defeated and they’ll enter into a brief period of peace that sets the stage for Ezekiel’s Battle (Ezekiel 38:11). They’re called battles instead of wars which means they’ll be of short duration and can happen within a fairly short span of time. They can come either before or after the Rapture but do have to happen before the Battle of Ezekiel 38 takes place.

The Sequence of Major Events is only the first of “Seven Things You Have To Know To Understand End Times Prophecy.” Next time we’ll cover The Destiny of the Three Components of Humanity, The Purpose and Length of the Great Tribulation, and The Purpose of the Rapture.

Well, I'm having my usual problems with the Rapture scenario here. It's certainly not that I think any other end times system is better than the Pretrib Rapture scenario, I don't, the Preterists and the Amillennialists are just too too wrong on awfully basic things. But the Pretrib Rapturists, while they may have some timing right, and some events in the right place, have something very very wrong in their Christian theology. Or something like that.

The Rapture and the State of Israel again Pt 1

The Rapture question has again caught my attention. Some time back I did some posts here on the subject and found myself moving closer to accepting the Rapture as a real possibility. For years I didn't have a solid position, though it had become more or less post-tribulation, that is, believing that the Rapture and the Second Coming are the same thing or at least occur at the same time. But I didn't hold that position with anything like a full commitment to it and other interpretations remained possible in my mind.

When I did the further investigations I've reported here it's not that I arrived at a solid Rapture position either, but I did move closer to it, simply by finding some of the arguments for it to be more scriptural than the opposition's arguments. But there have always remained questions in my mind no matter what position I'm entertaining at the moment.

Now I'm back to thinking about it again, not with any great enthusiasm because I still anticipate not being able to resolve it with any certainty. But I do have the thought that since I believe it COULD be a reality, whether I can commit to it completely isn't the important thing, what's important is what I leave behind for the people in my life if it does happen and some day I'm just suddenly gone. I think I owe it to them to give as much of an understanding of what happened as I'm able.

First Events Following the Rapture
Two things I'm very sure of are, one, that if there IS a rapture of the church terrible things are going to be happening on earth after that point, either right away or starting 3-1/2 years afterward, and, two, there is going to be a massive attempt at disinformation by evil powers to explain away what happened to the Church.

The most likely explanation of our disappearance anticipated by many these days is that we will have been whisked away by a gigantic UFO or many UFOs, to another location more suitable for our peculiarly "unevolved" mentality (and the expectation is that UFO's are going to become a common sight during those days). This, according to the inventers of the explanation, is simply for the practical reason that we just don't fit in the New Age utopia the UFO aliens are planning to construct on this planet. [Just to be clear, the aliens are not extra-terrestrials but evil spirits playing out this concocted scenario to deceive those who are deceivable.]

Those who are not deceived will come to recognize the truth about the Rapture as shown through the Bible and become followers of Christ, and will then go through a terrible tribulation at the hands of the Antichrist and his followers including the "aliens."

That much seems predictable if there is a Rapture, at least in general, since of course the specifics may turn out to be somewhat different. But for sure they'll need a phony explanation for the disappearance of the Christians, and any who recognize the truth will be persecuted.

The Real Reason for the Rapture if it does happen as described:
Why would the church be taken away just before all these things happen? The explanation that makes the most sense has to do with the Seventieth Week of Daniel and a resumption of God's dealings with Israel during that last seven years, picking up where He left off with the coming of Jesus. The Church is used to thinking that He didn't leave off at all, that Christ fulfilled the Old Testament and there is nothing left that needs doing. I have a lot of conflict about this myself. Christ certainly DID fulfill the Old Testament, all the prophecies, the whole point of the Old Testament. Why should there be any more then? Why should there be anything like a "resumption" of God's dealings with Israel? He's DEALT with Israel, the Church has inherited all the promises to Israel, it's a done deal.

Why should there be ANY ambivalence about any of this?

1) Well, for starters, the Biblical "Seventieth Week of Daniel" gives me pause. I'm completely convinced that there is yet this "week of years" left unfulfilled out of the "seventy weeks" given in Daniel 9:24-27, where the prophecy of the coming of Christ (completely fulfilled in the first 69 weeks) is mysteriously and ambiguously replaced by a prophecy of the Antichrist who is the subject of a covenant "confirmed" for "one week."

24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. 25 Know therefore and understand, [that] from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince [shall be] seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. 26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof [shall be] with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. 27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make [it] desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

Many try to force this last week into the last events of Christ's life, who made a New Covenant with believers, but the timing is all wrong, way out of line with those events. We need an explanation why the Holy Spirit would split the prophecy of seventy weeks into a block of 69 weeks and another separate week, a reasonable explanation that accounts for both in terms we can recognize. But the 69 weeks were perfectly exactly fulfilled by a simple counting of the years from "the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem" to the coming of Christ, while the last week fits no count in the events of His life at all and just remains hanging there without an explanation. The ONLY reasonable interpretation of this fact is that it MUST be yet future.

2) Then there is also the historical fact that there is a State of Israel now present on the physical land given to ancient Israel by God, as of May 14, 1948. This is really a staggering fact. In the context of the history of the Church for the last two millennia while the land of Palestine languished as barely inhabited wilderness, this physical resumption of the State of Israel is an extremely bizarre reality that can't be ignored. To dismiss it as a mere coincidence that has nothing to do with the prophecies about the physical land is absurd. Many prophecies have more than one fulfillment (for instance, prophecies of the Antichrist have already had two fulfillments at least -- one in Antioches Epiphanes of the time of the Maccabees, and another in Nero -- yet are also to have a future fulfillment). It is a very real possibility that some of the prophecies God gave to ancient Israel about its future restoration could have a fulfillment BOTH in the Church AND in a physical Israel.

Of course the State of Israel is not a theocracy, it was not restored out of obedience to God but out of the Jewish need for a refuge in a hostile world, which became urgent with the rise of Nazism.

==========================
More to come.

Tal Brooke's "Riders of the Cosmic Circuit:" the experience of "enlightenment"

The book, Riders of the Cosmic Circuit by Tal Brooke, was my subject two blog posts ago, but now I want to link to this review of it by Elliott Miller that interested me. It's particularly interesting to me because during the 70s I was surrounded by people who followed one or another of the gurus whose lives the book chronicles -- Sai Baba, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and Swami Muktananda -- among others he doesn't cover in the book, including Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who through the Beatles brought us "Transcendental Meditation." The country is now well-sprinkled with the teachings of these and other Eastern religious and occultic influences.

The practitioners of Eastern religions often speak of "enlightenment," which in differing forms is the goal of the practice of all of them, as a necessary insight into the meaning of life that can be gained through the specific disciplines of the religion. A release from the sufferings of this life is the goal of some of them but I may not understand this well enough myself to be characterizing it accurately.

Tal Brooke practiced in India with the Hindu guru Sai Baba and claims to know what the enlightenment experience entails and in this book apparently attempts to make it understandable to others, both Christians and unbelievers. Whether he accurately characterizes it or not is a question the reviewer raises, but it sounds like his analysis is worth pondering.

I'll just quote some of this review and then later probably some from the book:

... At the heart of the New Age movement is the phenomenon of mystical/occult experience, and, resulting from that, the quest for a permanent and com­plete state of mystical “Enlightenment.” Brooke presents case studies of three Indian “super gurus” who have probably been more widely regarded by New Agers as being enlightened than any other spiri­tual leaders of our time: the legendary Sai Baha [typo: should be "Baba"], the notorious Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and the recently deceased “power yogi,” Swami Muktananda.

Brooke provides interesting background concerning each of these “riders” spiritual odysseys. Culminating in what he terms the “Explosion” point, in which Enlightenment is achieved. He demonstrates that in each case the attainment of such a state required a deliberate annihilation of conscience and morality. Thus, by highlighting the evil that predictably concentrates in the most advanced cases of “Enlightenment,” Brooke brings into focus what New Age spirituality ultimately holds for the individ­ual as well as society.

Second, Brooke writes with the authority and insight of one who has been there, both externally and internally. Externally, in India during 1969-71 he served in the inner circle of Sai Baba — his most privi­leged Western disciple. Internally, he him­self had journeyed far on the mystical path, reaching the very threshold of Enlightenment (where he was continually kept back by encountering something “unbelievably sinister to my deepest feel­ing”).

A third quality which distinguishes Riders is that it is written for the unbeliever, in secular style, as few Christian books have been. Thus, its chief value lies in its utility as a book to give non-Christians who are on the mystical path. While most Christian books would alienate them, this one will most likely intrigue them.

The book also offers insight to Christian readers. A particularly provocative feature is its profound analysis of the Enlight­enment experience. The author probes deeply into its spiritual nature and poten­tial eschatological significance.

Are there other malevolent spirit beings besides demons/devils?

This post doesn't relate specifically to the end times, but demons and devils seem to get discussed here more than on my other blogs so that's why it's here.

I've always thought of "demons" as the generic term for fallen angels or malevolent spiritual beings. Or "devils" as the King James has it. These are merely the terms already established in a particular language before the Bible was written in that language -- "devils" being the term in English and "demons" or "daemons" in Greek. Apparently the revisers of 1881 didn't much like the English language (see my blog The Great Bible Hoax) and foisted as many Hebrew and Greek terms on English-speaking people through their revision as they could get away with, at the great cost of unnecessary mystification for the average English-speaking Bible reader, on the supposition that the English terms were somehow inadequate. So they preferred the Greek "Hades" and the Hebrew "Sheol" to the English "Hell," as being somehow closer to the reality of the abode of punishment-- based on what inside knowledge is anyone's guess, but Westcott and Hort's whole theory of textual history was spun from mental cobwebs as it was, so there's not a whole lot to trust in anything they did.

The Bible isn't very explicit in defining either Hell OR the nature of devils, but there's no reason to think that the Hebrew or the Greek concepts have anything on the English concept. ALL the cultural concepts would no doubt have to be modified to fit the actual reality which can be known only through the Holy Spirit, all the cultural sources being ultimately untrustworthy even if they contain some truth. And Jesus' life, death, resurrection and ascension have changed all that anyway, in ways that are also not spelled out. The cultural terms describe a pre-Christian holding place insofar as they are accurate at all, holding until the completion of the work of the Messiah Jesus, so the specific differences from culture to culture which of course preexist His coming do not matter.

But I digress (have to complain about Westcott and Hort at every opportunity you know). To reiterate more briefly, the point I wanted to make was that all cultures have terms for devils and for Hell that preceded the Biblical revelation, and reasonable translators have always used the term of the culture to convey the Biblical meaning for that culture. Since the Bible doesn't give much of a picture of the nature of devils or of Hell the cultural recognition of such things is all we need anyway until the fulfillment of all things.

Sometimes a culture recognizes many different spiritual entities, and many different hells as well. Buddhism has at least six hells as I recall (from my pre-Christian days of spiritual seeking) each one designed to punish a particular sin, and as many paradises too I think, to reward degrees or kinds of righteousness. It's all temporary, however, a waystation preceding the return to another life on earth.

Until I became aware of all these things I had never given Hell much thought, but the discovery that such a place is acknowledged by most (all?) cultures was revelatory in itself. I suppose I'd had some vague idea that it was a peculiarly Christian concept. Demons or devils too. Seeing its universality gave it even more of a claim to authentic reality than I was already prepared to give it having apprehended that the Bible was truly God's word.

The main topic I had in mind for this post is whether demons or devils are the only evil spiritual beings. Occasionally one hears a Christian contend that there are others. It's true that the Bible pictures quite a variety of spiritual creatures, in the context of the throne of heaven particularly, but not malevolent or evil ones.

Different cultures may recognize a variety of spiritual beings, only some of which they regard as malevolent and call devils. These are the "gods" they worship. It's only through the Biblical revelation that we know that ALL of them are malevolent, under the leadership of Satan, intent on deceiving people just as Satan did back in Eden and attracting worship to themselves. Some 300 such "gods" are recognized in India for instance. Only the clearly hostile ones are called devils.

Again, from the Biblical perspective they are ALL devils, all fallen angels who oppose God and seek to draw humanity away from God.

They may appear in various forms, some partly animal for instance, some as "fairies" or "gnomes" and the like, everything from petty mischief-makers to ferocious monsters, such as those images often found in Asia and India with bloody skulls draped around them. Some appear as beautiful shining angels, and some even as half devil and half angel.

I've usually thought of all these spiritual entities as Satan's horde of angels that fell with him as described in Ezekiel and Isaiah, before the world was created, but the Bible also suggests -- in Genesis 6 -- that some angels fell by being attracted to women after the Creation, and "married" them and had offspring by them. I don't know whether this is to be regarded as a separate instance of angels falling, but they WERE angels (that's what "sons of God" means) so they weren't some other kind of spiritual being. Their offspring were giants, or Nephilim, part human, part angel, not described in any detail in the Bible but quite a bit in the Book of Enoch, an "apocryphal" book that (most of) the early Church fathers regarded as inspired, though it lost that status later.

The Nephilim seem to have a lot in common with the Greek and Roman gods who had both gods and humans for parents, the "mighty men of old" as the Bible puts it, such as Hercules. There are part human and part animal creatures too in some religions. Some suggest that these were the result of experiments by fallen angels in an attempt to destroy the human seed that God intends to save, and that this sort of tampering is still going on through the agency of "extraterrestrials" (demons in disguise of course) who abduct people to their "UFOs" where supposedly they perform many experiments with the human reproductive system. I've never investigated any of this myself but the existence of strange creatures in the lore of many cultures along with the hints in the Bible make it seem plausible enough to me.

And perhaps in some cultures these creatures are thought of as spiritual entities, and perhaps they are partly so, but all the Bible says is that angels fell, no other kind of creature.

Therefore it seems possible that "angels" come in many different forms so that there are many different kinds of demons or devils as well, they being merely fallen angels.

The point is that the Bible speaks ONLY of fallen "angels," not any other kind of malevolent spiritual being, and hints at no "fall" of spiritual beings other than angels, but any other kinds of malevolent spiritual beings that may exist would have to have fallen as all were originally created to obey God. They'd all have to have been "angels" originally, and now "fallen angels" or "demons" or "devils" even if they exist in a great variety of forms.

It must be obvious from this musing that I haven't spent much time reading up on demonology as all this is off the top of my head.