Blog Archives
Are we fast approaching the end of the age (aka “the last days”)?
Are we fast approaching the end of the age (as prophesied in the Bible and by various believers down through the centuries)?
The Didache – The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations
Chapter 16. Watchfulness; the Coming of the Lord. Watch for your life’s sake. Let not your lamps be quenched, nor your loins unloosed; but be ready, for you know not the hour in which our Lord will come. But come together often, seeking the things which are befitting to your souls: for the whole time of your faith will not profit you, if you are not made perfect in the last time. For in the last days false prophets and corrupters shall be multiplied, and the sheep shall be turned into wolves, and love shall be turned into hate; for when lawlessness increases, they shall hate and persecute and betray one another, and then shall appear the world-deceiver as Son of God, and shall do signs and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands, and he shall do iniquitous things which have never yet come to pass since the beginning. Then shall the creation of men come into the fire of trial, and many shall be made to stumble and shall perish; but those who endure in their faith shall be saved from under the curse itself. And then shall appear the signs of the truth: first, the sign of an outspreading in heaven, then the sign of the sound of the trumpet. And third, the resurrection of the dead — yet not of all, but as it is said: “The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him.” Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven.
For those readers who would welcome an authoritative and balanced commentary on the Didache I highly recommend The Way of Life (Didache: A New Translation and Messianic Jewish Commentary) by Toby Janicki (600 pages, Vine of David © 2017).
On the Last Times, the Antichrist, and the End of the World
Dearly beloved brothers, believe the Holy Spirit who speaks in us. We have already told you that the end of the world is near, the consummation remains. Has not faith withered away among mankind? How many foolish things are seen among youths, how many crimes among prelates, how many lies among priests, how many perjuries among deacons! There are evil deeds among the ministers, adulteries in the aged, wantonness in the youths—in mature women false faces, in virgins dangerous traces! In the midst of all this there are the wars with the Persians, and we see struggles with diverse nations threatening and “kingdom rising against kingdom’’ (Matt. 24:7). When the Roman Empire begins to be consumed by the sword, the coming of the Evil One is at hand. It is necessary that the world come to an end at the completion of the Roman empire.
In those days two brothers will come to the Roman empire who will rule with one mind; but because one will surpass the other, there will be a schism between them. And so the Adversary will be loosed and will stir up hatred between the Persian and Roman empires. In those days many will rise up against Rome; the Jewish people will be her adversaries. There will be stirrings of nations and evil reports, pestilences, famines, and earthquakes in various places. All nations will receive captives; there will be wars and rumors of wars. From the rising to the setting of the sun the sword will devour much. The times will be so dangerous that in fear and trembling they will not permit thought of better things, because many will be the oppressions and desolations of regions that are to come.
We ought to understand thoroughly therefore, my brothers, what is imminent or overhanging. Already there have been hunger and plagues, violent movements of nations and signs, which have been predicted by the Lord, they have already been fulfilled (consummated), and there is not other which remains, except the advent of the wicked one in the completion of the Roman kingdom. Why therefore are we occupied with worldly business, and why is our mind held fixed on the lusts of the world or on the anxieties of the ages? Why therefore do we not reject every care of worldly business, and why is our mind held fixed on the lusts of the world or on the anxieties of the ages? Why therefore do we not reject every care of earthly actions and prepare ourselves for the meeting of the Lord Christ, so that he may draw us from the confusion, which overwhelms all the world? Believe you me, dearest brother, because the coming (advent) of the Lord is nigh, believe you me, because the end of the world is at hand, believe me, because it is the very last time. Or do you not believe unless you see with your eyes? See to it that this sentence be not fulfilled among you of the prophet who declares: “Woe to those who desire to see the day of the Lord!” For all the saints and elect of God are gathered, prior to the tribulation that is to come, and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins. And so, brothers most dear to me, it is the eleventh hour, and the end of the world comes to the harvest, and angels, armed and prepared, hold sickles in their hands, awaiting the empire of the Lord. And we think that the earth exists with blind infidelity, arriving at its downfall early. Commotions are brought forth, wars of diverse peoples and battles and incursions of the barbarians threaten, and our regions shall be desolated, and we neither become very much afraid of the report nor of the appearance, in order that we may at least do penance; because they hurl fear at us, and we do not wish to be changed, although we at least stand in need of penance for our actions!
When therefore the end of the world comes, there arise diverse wars, commotions on all sides, horrible earthquakes, perturbations of nations, tempests throughout the lands, plagues, famine, drought throughout the thoroughfares, great danger throughout the sea and dry land, constant persecutions, slaughters and massacres everywhere, fear in the homes, panic in the cities, quaking in the thoroughfares, suspicions in the male, anxiety in the streets. In the desert people become senseless, spirits melt in the cities. A friend will not be grieved over a friend, neither a brother for a brother, nor parents for their children, nor a faithful servant for his master, but one inevitability shall overwhelm them all; neither is anyone able to be recovered in that time, who has not been made completely aware of the coming danger, but all people, who have been constricted by fear, are consumed because of the overhanging evils.
Whenever therefore the earth is agitated by the nations, people will hide themselves from the wars in the mountains and rocks, by caves and caverns of the earth, by graves and memorials of the dead, and there, as they waste away gradually by fear, they draw breath, because there is not any place at all to flee, but there will be concession and intolerable pressure. And those who are in the east will flee to the west, and moreover, those who are in the west shall flee to the east, and there is not a safer place anywhere, because the world shall be overwhelmed by worthless nations, whose aspect appears to be of wild animals more than that of men. Because those very much horrible nations, most profane and most defiled, who do not spare lives, and shall destroy the living from the dead, shall consume the dead, they eat dead flesh, they drink the blood of beasts, they pollute the world, contaminate all things, and the one who is able to resist them is not there. In those days people shall not be buried, neither Christian, nor heretic, neither Jew, nor pagan, because of fear and dread there is not one who buries them; because all people, while they are fleeing, ignore them.
Whenever the days of the times of those nations have been fulfilled, after they have destroyed the earth, it shall rest; and now the kingdom of the Romans is removed from everyday life, and the empire of the Christians is handed down by God and Peter; and then the consummation comes, when the kingdom of the Romans begins to be fulfilled, and all dominions and powers have been fulfilled. Then that worthless and abominable dragon shall appear, he, whom Moses named in Deuteronomy, saying: Dan is a young lion, reclining and leaping from Basan. Because he reclines in order that he may seize and destroy and slay. Indeed (he is) a young whelp of a lion not as the lion of the tribe of Judah, but roaring because of his wrath, that he may devour. “And he leaps out from Basan.” “Basan” certainly is interpreted “confusion.” He shall rise up from the confusion of his iniquity. The one who gathers together to himself a partridge the children of confusion, also shall call them, whom he has not brought forth, just as Jeremiah the prophet says. Also in the last day they shall relinquish him just as confused.
When therefore the end of the world comes, that abominable, lying and murderous one is born from the tribe of Dan. He is conceived from the seed of a man and from an unclean or most vile virgin, mixed with an evil or worthless spirit. But that abominable corrupter, more of spirits than of bodies, while a youth, the crafty dragon appears under the appearance of righteousness, before he takes the kingdom. Because he will be craftily gentle to all people, not receiving gifts, not placed before another person, loving to all people, quiet to everyone, not desiring gifts, appearing friendly among close friends, so that men may bless him, saying, he is a just man, not knowing that a wolf lies concealed under the appearance of a lamb, and that a greedy man is inside under the skin of a sheep.
But when the time of the abomination of his desolation begins to approach, having been made legal, he takes the empire, and, just as it is said in the Psalm:—They have been made for the undertaking for the sons of Loth, the Moabites and the Ammanites shall meet him first as their king. Therefore, when he receives the kingdom, he orders the temple of God to be rebuilt for himself, which is in Jerusalem; who, after coming into it, he shall sit as God and order that he be adored by all nations, since he is carnal and filthy and mixed with worthless spirit and flesh. Then that eloquence shall be fulfilled of Daniel the prophet:–And he shall not know the God of their fathers, and he shall not know the desires of women. Because the very wicked serpent shall direct every worship to himself. Because he shall put forth an edict so that people may be circumcised according to the rite of the old law. Then the Jews shall congratulate him, because he gave them again the practice of the first covenant; then all people from everywhere shall flock together to him at the city of Jerusalem, and the holy city shall be trampled on by the nations for forty-two months, just as the holy apostle says in the Apocalypse, which become three and a half years, 1,260 days.
In these three years and a half the heaven shall suspend its dew; because there will be no rain upon the earth, and the clouds shall cease to pass through the air, and the stars shall be seen with difficulty in the sky because of the excessive dryness, which happens in the time of the very fierce dragon. Because all great rivers and very powerful fountains that overflow with themselves shall be dried up, torrents shall dry up their water-courses because of the intolerable age, and there will be a great tribulation, as there has not been since people began to be upon the earth, and there will be famine and an insufferable thirst. And children shall waste away in the bosom of their mothers, and wives upon the knees of their husbands, by not having victuals to eat. Because there will be in those days lack of bread and water, and no one is able to sell or to buy of the grain of the fall harvest, unless he is one who has the serpentine sign on the forehead or on the hand. Then gold and silver and precious clothing or precious stones shall lie along the streets, and also even every type of pearls along the thoroughfares and streets of the cities, but there is not one who may extend the hand and take or desire them, but they consider all things as good as nothing because of the extreme lack and famine of bread, because the earth is not protected by the rains of heaven, and there will be neither dew nor moisture of the air upon the earth. But those who wander through the deserts, fleeing from the face of the serpent, bend their knees to God, just as lambs to the adders of their mothers, being sustained by the salvation of the Lord, and while wandering in states of desertion, they eat herbs.
Then, when this inevitability has overwhelmed all people, just and unjust, the just, so that they may be found good by their Lord; and indeed the unjust, so that they may be damned forever with their author the Devil, and, as God beholds the human race in danger and being tossed about by the breath of the horrible dragon, he sends to them consolatory proclamation by his attendants, the prophets Enoch and Elijah, who, while not yet tasting death, are the servants for the heralding of the second coming of Christ, and in order to accuse the enemy. And when those just ones have appeared, they confuse indeed the antagonistic serpent with his cleverness and they call back the faithful witnesses to God, in order to (free them) from his seduction…
And when the three and a half years have been completed, the time of the antichrist, through which he will have seduced the world, after the resurrection of the two prophets, in the hour which the world does not know, and on the day which the enemy of the son of perdition does not know, will come the sign of the Son of Man, and coming forward the Lord shall appear with great power and much majesty, with the sign of the wood of salvation going before him, and also even with all the powers of the heavens with the whole chorus of the saints, with those who bear the sign of the holy cross upon their shoulders, as the angelic trumpet precedes him, which shall sound and declare: Arise, O sleeping ones, arise, meet Christ, because his hour of judgment has come! Then Christ shall come and the enemy shall be thrown into confusion, and the Lord shall destroy him by the spirit of his mouth. And he shall be bound and shall be plunged into the abyss of everlasting fire alive with his father Satan; and all people who do his wishes shall perish with him forever; but the righteous ones shall inherit everlasting life with the Lord forever and ever.
Why Is The Tribe Of Dan Missing From The Book Of Revelation? – February 20, 2017 by Jack Wellman
https://catholicprophecy.org/monk-adso/
The prophecy of Monk Adso dates back to the 10th Century.
“Against the faithful will he (the Antichrist) rise up in three ways — that is, by terror, by gifts, and by wonders; to the believers in him will he give gold and silver in abundance; but those whom he shall fail to corrupt by presents he will overcome by fear, and those whom he shall fail to vanquish by fear he will seek to seduce by signs and wonders…
NOTE: Other prophecies describe the Antichrist as a charismatic ruler whose false miracles will seduce the elect.
“The ruined Temple also, which Solomon raised to God, he shall build and restore to its former state… and he shall circumcise himself, and lie that he is the Son of God almighty… Thereafter shall he send his messengers and preachers to the whole world.
“Then shall all the Jews flock unto him, and thinking they shall receive Christ they shall receive the devil… Coming to Jerusalem he shall be circumcised, saying to the Jews, I am the Christ promised unto you, who have come for your weal that I may gather and defend you that are scattered…
NOTE: This theme is spoken of again and again. The Antichrist will make Jerusalem the seat of his kingdom and will lead the Jewish people into believing that he is their long-awaited Messiah.
“Then shall be sent into the world the two great prophets Elias and Enoch, who shall forearm the faithful with godly weapons against the task of the Antichrist, and they shall encourage and get them ready for the war… But after they have accomplished their preaching, the Antichrist shall rise up and slay them, and after three days they shall be raised up by the Lord…
“The doctors also teach, as saith Pope Gregory, that Michael the Archangel shall destroy him (the Antichrist) on Mount Olivet in his pavilion and seat, in that place where the Lord ascended into heaven…”
BOOKS
Robert Van Kampen’s “The Sign” (1992) and his “The Rapture Question Answered: Plain and Simple” (1997). Van Kampen’s makes a powerful argument for a pre-(God’s) Wrath rapture of believers as opposed to a Pre-Tribulation or Mid-Tribulation rapture See comments below under the link to Marvin Rosenthal’s book)
Prewrath Rapture of the Church Paperback – June 29, 1990 by Marvin Rosenthal My comments: Rosenthal’s thesis and supporting documentation & reasoning parallels a line of thought & various conclusions I came to many, many years ago: Namely that the rapture/parousia (2nd Coming/“catching away”) by Messiah Yeshua of believers will NOT occur before the Tribulation or Great Tribulation but instead will take place immediately prior to the outpouring of God’s wrath. Believers will thus be on the earth to endure Satan’s wrath which transpires during the 3.5 year Tribulation period and most of the 3.5 years long Great Tribulation period.
The Rabbi Who Found Messiah: The Story of Yitzhak Kaduri and His Prophecies of the Endtime First Edition, First edition (2013) by Carl Gallups. My thoughts: This book tells the story of a revered Orthodox Rabbi who claimed to have seen the Messiah and wrote down his name (revealed at a specific time after his passing per his instructions) as “Yeshua” (Jesus). However, as part of his claim, he stated that the Messiah is physically alive and walking about Israel which suggests he saw a counterfeit Yeshua – possibly the Antimessiah depicted in various prophetic books in the Bible (Yeshua in the Brit Chadashah/New Testament returns in a supernatural way at the end of the Great Tribulation and is not born a 2nd time physically into this world).
This short video by AofC Network lines up with what I wrote above in May 2020.
The Rabbi, the Secret Message, and the Identity of Messiah by Carl Gallups (2019)
VIDEOS (Free)
Beware False Prophets (Identifying the Anti-Messiah) – Messianic Rabbi Steve Berkson
I Will Shake All Things – Part 1: The Nations – Derek Prince
I Will Shake All Things – Part 2: The Church – Derek Prince
“Exploring the Mid-East Wars of Psalm 83 and Ezekiel 38” by Bill Salus
I Saw the Tribulation .. Ken Peters .. 2000
In 1980 Peters, a nominal Catholic at the time had a super vivid prophetic dream in which he saw how the Tribulation will unfold in the US and across the world. As Peters himself shares in the video, he was a Catholic had never heard or read anything about the “end times” or the Antimessiah and had also never heard any priest do a reading or preach from the book of Revelations. So he went into his prophetic dream with no prior exposure to the things he saw unfold and transpire.
According to this documentary posted in 2018 Peters described 14 things in his dream — most technological in nature – -which have been developed in the 30 years since his 1980 experience: Ken Peters saw 14 End Times prophecies 30 years ago now fulfilled in the news. (New Edited Version)
One of the things Peters (now a nondenominational evangelical pastor) described is blue-helmeted & blue ball cap-wearing police on patrol in partially destroyed American cities (He later realized he was being shown UN forces). The UN had no blue helmets or ball caps when Peters had his dream.
In the wake of the police murder of George Lloyd, an African-American gentleman, on May 26, 2020, in Minneapolis (Minn.) and the ensuing unrest, looting, and riots in many major US cities, it is rumored that some government officials have bandied about the idea of having UN forces help keep or restore order in some American cities. If true, it is highly unlikely that UN troops will be mobilized now or in the foreseeable future anywhere in the US. However, the mere fact anyone in any official capacity would entertain asking the UN to deploy troops in America to deal with the current spate of protests, looting, and such, suggests that if and when a major breakdown in civil order occurs across the US — perhaps precipitated by a massive natural or human-made calamity or series of calamities — lawmakers might ask the UN to mobilize some of its troops to help police areas plagued by intense unrest, chaos, and crime.
Concluding remarks
No matter what conclusions you reach about our place as a world on the prophetic timeline, one of the most important things you can do to prepare for whatever lies ahead is to “get on God’s page”:
“Here’s what matters most in the Covid-19 pandemic”
Everything you ever wanted to know about post-death decomposition (“Body Farm” video)
© 2020 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved.
Neither a “Roman at the games” nor a supporter of those who play at this be
High detailed spartan, roman, greek helmet in laurel wreath badge with rings and stars. sports military fighting badge icon, 3d rendering isolated on black background.
Where you have competition, you have losers and those who seem to revel in their loss. Pretty much everyone reading this knows how the Romans flocked to the Amphitheatrum Flavium better known as the Coliseum (starting around 80 CE) and were thrilled to see gladiatorial contest losers being dispatched and were reportedly especially happy when enemies of the state were served up to the Angel of Death in the goriest way possible. Today this competitive impulse is vented and satisfied in sports stadiums and contests of every description. And….on TV and in movies, in science and medicine, in academia, and in pretty much every endeavor or undertaking you can name. It is almost as if the road up is paved with the wounded, fallen, and discarded.
I personally think we all get more mileage out of cooperation than competition, which is actually a cardinal expression of our social nature. But we still compete. In academia, the term “publish or perish” wasn’t coined as a joke but as a reflection of the cutthroat competition that researchers, scholars and professors keenly feel. Today it is almost commonplace to read about retracted papers whose underlying studies include fraudulent or plagiarized data or information, which I suspect arises when researchers and others feel the only way to “stay afloat” is to take “shortcuts to glory” (Something that when exposed oftentimes sinks the very careers the perpetrators hoped to sustain and grow). The website “Retraction Watch” is actually devoted to airing these kinds of failings from the world of published research.
What concerns me isn’t that people make bad choices, we all do at one time or another after all, but rather that some folks seem to revel in seeing the “perpetrators” thrust into the spotlight and made to endure a seeming unending barrage of shame and denunciation. Some even anticipate bad times for not only people who wonder off the straight & narrow, but for those who are unconventional or are doing things that could be perceived or interpreted as crossing some real or imagined legal or regulatory line by the powers-that-be. Some seem to salivate at the very prospect that an ill wind will blast those they disagree with or oppose into obscurity…or worse.
Those who take this particular low road are IMO the modern day equivalent of those Romans who clamored for the destruction of those who had violated Imperial law.
So why do people, especially cultured, educated souls, seem to thrill in what amounts to an exercise in cruelty? Has their sense of competitiveness and the need to be right taken on a pathological dimension? Do they find that the only way they can feel better is by stepping on and then over the careers and lives of those they feel duty bound to hurl stones at? Do they have little or no empathy, at least for those they disagree with or oppose? Is it intolerance or ignorance at work…or both? Maybe it is all of this and more, at least in some instances. Let me share what I think motivates at least some of these “professional stone throwers”.
It is my contention that the mechanism (if you will) at work in those who either predict doom for their real or perceived nemeses (“worthy targets”) or who work towards this end, is the same one that animates the cruel actions of terrorists who behead their helpless victims. In 2005 I touched on this in an analytic article I titled “Terrorist beheadings and other forms of inflicted, violent death: Are victims aware of what is happening around them after their heart and lungs have stopped working?” (which you can access at https://biotheorist.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/terrorist-beheadings-and-other-forms-of-inflicted-violent-death-2009.pdf)
It will take only a few salient lines to spell out my spin on this:
…there is an element of “enlightened self interest” in our curiosity and even fascination with dying and death. When we ask “What did that poor soul experience?”, we are in some way seeking in the death of others some idea of what we might sense or think or visualize as we go through our own final, irreversible “systems failure”.
So there you have it. As I see it some, perhaps many “stone hurlers” – I refer specifically to those who engage in ad hominem attacks on people or classes or groups of people instead of challenging faulty or flawed ideas, or who make suppositions with regard to what underlies poor or bad choices as though they are privy to seeing into their being (quite a feat when you consider most mental processes beneath consciousness and are not accessible to us) – do so (in part) to both existentially anticipate and experience the suffering they predict or facilitate for those they oppose. Of course, if their target winds up in hot water, rehab, prison or the cemetery, there is the ego-gratification of being able to say (either bluntly or ever so diplomatically) “See, I told you so”. By virtue of this they feel justified in the rightness of their particular stone hurling activities and encouraged to continue doing so. Society is not better for it, for successful cruelty has a way of attracting imitators and supporters and then of being further reinforced until it becomes “a self-evident truth”.
How should we deal with stone hurling and other forms of depersonalizing cruelty? The faulty thinking, choices and ideas that underlie such actions should be brought to light, dissected and challenged. But under no circumstance should this include attacks on the character or worth of people who have “played a Roman at the games” or supported those who do so. And, last but not least, we should strive mightily to meet and supplant heartless, cynical or even cruel actions on the part of others with exceeding kindness, cooperation, forgiveness and mercy whenever possible.
© 2013 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved.
Recommended Supplemental Reading
The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen
The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will by Heidi M. Ravven, Ph.D.
The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity by Bruce Hood, Ph.D.
The Illusion of Conscious Will by Dr. Daniel M. Wegner
Terrorist beheadings and other forms of inflicted, violent death: Are victims aware of what is happening around them after their heart and lungs have stopped working?
The many beheadings carried out by insurgents in Iraq during the past year or so not unexpectedly generated expressions of revulsion and denunciation far and wide. It is difficult for all but the most callous souls not to feel pangs of anguish for those who have been dealt this grisly fate. No doubt many of you have at one time or another found yourself trying to imagine the thoughts and feelings of the victims prior to and during decapitation. And then thinking, “Were they aware of anything following this despicable act?”
This concern has a lot to do with our human capacity to emphasize and sympathize with others, but there is an element of “enlightened self-interest” in our curiosity and even fascination with dying and death. When we ask “What did that poor soul experience?”, we are in some way seeking in the death of others some idea of what we might sense or think or visualize as we go through our own final, irreversible “systems failure”.
Modern science has amassed a great deal of evidence that the dying brain can and often does generate a wide range of images and such, not unexpectedly reflective of individual beliefs, expectation, and history. But what of the period immediately following cessation of heart and lungs? For example, does the brain of a just severed head continue to function?
Consider this account tendered by a French physician named Beaurieux who attended the state-sanctioned guillotining of a criminal named Languille during the early morning hours of June 28th, 1905 (France abolished the death penalty in 1981):
For Seekers & Other Heretics 