No tags yet.
Shalom Aleichem and welcome to my bi-monthly blog!
God created Man on the Sixth Day to rule over Creation. However, what was originally intended to be “very good” became very bad with the Fall of Man.
Previously, we mentioned the emergence of a Satan-inspired kingdom of man beginning with the Tower of Babel. We later saw how this kingdom - in the form of the ancient empires of Babylon and Rome - destroyed God’s Holy City Jerusalem and exiled His people twice. In the end times, Satan will raise up an evil world power - a revived Roman-Babylonian empire - to destroy Israel, even as he misleads the increasingly apostate Church - Babylon the Prostitute as revealed to John in Revelations - to turn against those who remain faithful to God in the Body of Christ. This kingdom of man that opposes God’s Kingdom and people throughout history was what was revealed to Nebuchadnezzar in a dream 2600 years ago. It is a demonic kingdom working under the spirit of the Antichrist, just as God’s Kingdom is directed by the Spirit of Christ (Holy Spirit).
We see the spirit of the Antichrist at work in the first son of man, Cain, when he murdered his brother. Just as Cain was jealous that God favoured the offering of his brother Abel, Satan (Angel of Light) is jealous that God favoured Man (Lesser Light), God having made us in His image to reflect His divine light/glory. In Nimrod, whose name means “Rebel”, who established the first kingdom of man in Babylon where the Tower of Babel was later built. In Pharaoh, the hardened heart who tried to destroy God’s chosen people, Israel, when they were in Egypt. In Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed the First Temple and exiled the Jews to Babylon. In Herod, who tried to kill the infant Jesus. And in Israel - God’s very chosen nation - whose leaders crucified the Messiah.
Even within the Body of Christ, we saw how, throughout Church history, the divine life brought about by the Holy Spirit characteristic of the Fifth Day of Creation was quickly robbed away by the opposing spirit of the Antichrist characteristic of the Sixth Day. This unholy spirit was already at work among the Apostles - had it not been for the overwhelming power of the Holy Spirit that came upon them during the Pentecost, the natural inclination of the Apostles was to fight among themselves for position and power within Christ’s Kingdom (References). As the hope for Christ’s soon return faded over time and with Christianity becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Church became more and more “of this world”. What the Apostles had earlier struggled against - earthly power and politics - became the focus and ambition of the Church as man started to justify their own authority and rule in the name of God. This rule of man within the Kingdom of God culminated in the Great Schism or division in 1054 AD (AM 5013 - marking the beginning of the Sixth Day of Creation), when the Bishop or Pope of Rome declared himself head over all the other key bishops with authority over the entire universal Church. Indeed, Pope Innocent III put forward the famous idea that the Emperor was the moon (lesser light) to the Pope’s sun (greater light), meaning that the Pope ruled not only over the Church but over the earth’s kingdoms and nations. The Kingdom of God has now become the kingdom of this world!
As we approach the end of the Sixth Day of Creation in our generation, we can expect the unholy spirit of the Antichrist that has been working in the kingdoms of man and God to come together to form the rule of the Antichrist - the end-time Roman-Babylonian Empire and Babylon the Prostitute that we mentioned earlier. This joining together of the State and Church has happened before in the Christian Roman Empire, which lasted from the time of Emperor Constantine in 312 AD to 476 AD (in the West) and 1453 AD (in the East - this Eastern kingdom was also known as the Byzantine Empire). Following the fall of Rome, there were efforts to revive the Western Roman Empire (as the Holy Roman Empire) by both the French and Germans, with the Holy Roman Emperors crowned by the Roman Popes of that time. This was followed by Napoleon Bonaparte (1804-1814) and ultimately Adolf Hitler (1933-1945). In Hitler’s Third Reich (“Third Empire”), which he declared would last a thousand years; the Jewish Holocaust where 6 million Jews were slaughtered on this Sixth Day of Creation (incidentally, there are about 6 million Jews in Israel today); and the German Church during that period comprising the apostate Nazi national church and the true “confessing church” (Reference); we were given the clearest glimpse into how the future kingdom of the Antichrist may look like.
Finally, we need to consider the role that Islam and the Muslim countries could play in this end-time demonic kingdom - Islam is the dominant religion in those areas occupied by Israel’s former enemies; it is on the rise in Europe; and there are attempts to bring Christianity and Islam together as one religion for the sake of peace.
When we fit all these pieces together, we see the beginnings of the end-time evil empire of the Antichrist.
Link to presentation.