YOU'RE GONNA SERVE SOMEBODY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtIEYjNZgiU
In the USA, we don't believe we serve anyone. One example; our factory has workers who are supposed to shotblast parts clean and then send them on to be finished and shipped out. But some of those workers think it is in their best interest to run as many parts a possible and impress their supervisor with production. Some of the larger parts load fewer into the blast chamber than the smaller parts. Thus, unless they are closely watched and given specific orders, those workers will ignore someone who needs a larger part run even if it is listed as a priority part. The workers doing this don't seem to realize that keeping priority parts supplied is good for the company and therefore good for them. They see only their own production not the bigger picture. They also don't realize that the supervisors do pay attention to see who takes on those lower production but much needed jobs because they are aware of the bigger picture.
But that's just one example. I see workers hiding behind machines or leaning into them or even walking down an aisle reading or texting on their phones. To see something. Facebook? IMs? Ball games? Porn? Who knows? I have seen bits of all those onscreen as I've walked by someone with their phone or just a lone phone running on a work desk. None of it has anything to do with work or concentrating on work. Break times are every two hours and someone can't wait for that long to see pictures on their phone? Pictures that are what, four or five inches big?
Let me say I have likely wasted a lot of my life on video, too. But not at work. This may mean I have better priorities or it may merely mean I don't own a phone with any of the new options.
Php 2:5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. {fashion: or habit}
(KJV)
From The Power Delusion by Anthony Campolo Jr.:
"In Jesus, God expressed himself in a way that is shocking. He expressed himself as a god of love and in the process set aside power. The story of the baby in Bethlehem's manger is meant to be much more than the sentimental story to elicit good feelings at Christmas time. The story expresses and demonstrates the God has chosen to come to us.
"In the birth of Jesus, entered history as a vulnerable infant."
Jesus was born with all the weaknesses you and I had as children, all the surrounding dangers, all the feelings of human weakness and the temptations. He was exactly like us except for one thing. Campolo again:
"He was without sin. But He did not resist evil and live a pure life merely by depending upon Himself. Instead, it was in dependence on the Father that He found the wherewithal to conquer the temptations of the flesh. He was as weak as any of us, but He grew in fellowship with the Father and therein found strength to overcome the evil one."
He knew the truth of God and gave us the keys in obedience to the Father.
But human fancy saw him differently. Some of the Gnostic. personal power, special knowledge "gospels" showed that child Christ as striking dead other children who mocked him and another showed him snapping his fingers to put life into model pigeons made of mud. Concerning those human ideas, Campolo writes:
"These writings were never included in the Bible for obvious reasons. The stories are totally out of character with the nature of our Lord. God did not incarnate Himself as a superboy who dazzled his peers with magic tricks. The church fathers knew that Jesus grew up as one of us, taking on our frailties and weaknesses. They knew that in Jesus, God had abandoned his power and majesty in in order to present Himself as one we could imitate. If it had been otherwise, He would not have been able to ask us to be like Him."
Think on that for a moment. God wanted to let us see we could live in obedience to Him by acting in love in relationship to Him by the arrival of the Holy Spirit to indwell and enable us to be like him.
Like Him as that vulnerable human being, living in original flesh, aiming toward the tomorrow of perfect flesh, Final Flesh.
Meanwhile we know thr world wil say there is no one like the Antichrist. He will say his standard is the one that can't be met yet by us. We have to learn or grow spiritually or evolve.
So we have the contrast as to what we are in our fallen state and how God handled the state. And we know how the new religion which is Anti God will play out.
After the Israel battle which weakens Russia and her Islamic allies, humanity, with the Holy Spirit acting in special cases only, will seek after the strongest leader. One who is handsome and physically imposing like Saul. The cult of physical fitness will bow to his physique. He will likely be "self-made" rich as we see it, though no one ever becomes rich or in any state of success without help. We have J. G. wentworth telling everyone they should want their cash NOW! The AC will expect everyone to serve HIM. He will be one who praises peace and prosperity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kloRI-ywfT4
The sovereignty idea sums up the "do it ourselves" philosophy. We think we have the power as a nation to succeed. It is a subtle denial of God as the sovereign power over all. Patriotism for the alliance that the AC forms will eventually drive the confrontation between the 200 million man army and the troops rallied by the AC.
Christians know only God brings peace. Only He can offer prosperity. What we need to fill the mission He gives us.
The Addiction Network has ads telling anyone with a problem to come to them. They feature a young man in scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck. There is never any statement that the young man is a doctor so he probably is not. They are taking advantage of a study that showed we will listen to someone in the proper uniform as if they are an expert. The uniform impresses our subconscious and we listen.
The power of the AC will be his looks and the power of that will be magnified by video. He will have the power to reach all the world thanks to the news channels and satellite coverage, internet coverage where people don't have to tell anything like the truth and they can market their own goods wrapped around whatever mythology they wish to create. One internet show tells you the children at Sandyhook were not really killed and then sells you vitamins and survivalist gizmos. The key seems to be to never admit to lying and never to apologize. The egotist seems to function very well in the current media situation.
And that links the FP to the AC: media. THE media AS the modern idea of church. Not somewhere where you go to mix with your brother and sister Christians but a place in your living room where you can change the channel and find a media leader telling you things yoiu want to hear with no one to challenge your ideas. As we highlighted, the FP will set up the mark, the message, makes the AC's image the center of worship. He carries the media torch. The power of the media is obvious, but let me cite a single example from Entertainment Weekly, August 4, 2017. In an article entitled "The Woman Changing the Face of Hollywood", they feature an interview with talent agent Christy Haubegger, head of CAA's diversity initiative. When asked about results she was seeing in an effort to bring ethnic and gender diversity she responded:
"A couple years ago I got to meet Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Prize. I stayed up late finishing her autobiography, I Am Malala. And, in the book, she mentions Ugly Betty. talking about the fact Betty was a journalist and a young woman who made her think that she might want to use her voice. I sent a not to (Betty executive producer) Selma Hayek in the middle of the night, like, "Oh my gosh," I said to Selma and (Ugly Betty star America Ferrera), "Don't doubt for am moment that what you do matters. There are 7 billion people in the world and most of them will never come to the United States, but they're going to see our movies and our television. And we get to tell them what a hero looks like." (My emphasis)
Media HAS been telling them what a hero looks like for decades. He's Clint Eastwood and John Wayne. Media told our own country that one so often that having a black man's face in the White House despite all those stints by Morgan Freeman drove many in the USA raised with that old hero face to vote for anyone reminding them of that face again. And not vote for the female face that apparently scared them even more than the black MAN'S face. And we arrived at the current President who repeats the platitudes of yesterday assuring the ones who voted in nostalgia that things will be "great again."
But we see that same call to the past and the great MEN that were heroes even in Europe where the French cry for an election and hark back to a time before their socialist party ruled, a time of isolation, and England rushed to isolationist Brexit voting. The US media has bombarded everyone with those heroes.
So a new media hero fitting that description will move right in very comfortingly to those who have constant media exposure which is almost all of us.
Perhaps the most telling criticism of the effect comes from Harlan Ellison who would likely shiver at the idea of being quoted by a Christian, but here goes:
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/441835-the-glass-teat
“Ours is a society so immersed in the sea of video reactions that there are little old ladies out there who know Hoss Cartwright is more real than their next door neighbors. Everyone of value to them is an image. A totem. A phosphor-dot wraith whose hurts and triumphs are created from the magic of a scenarist’s need to make the next payment on his Porsche. (I recommend a book titled Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad, for a more complete, and horrifying analysis of this phenomenon. It’s an Avon paperback, so it shouldn’t trouble you too much to pick it up.) But because of this acceptance of the strangers who appear on the home screen, ours has become a society where shadow and reality intermix to the final elimination of any degree of rational selectivity on the part of those whose lives are manipulated: by the carnivores who flummox them, and the idols they choose to worship. I don’t know that there’s any answer to this. If we luck out and we get a John Kennedy or a Leonard Nimoy (who, strangely enough, tie in to one another by the common denominator of being humane), then we can’t call it a bad thing. But if we wind up with a public image that governs us as Ronald Reagan and Joe Pyne govern us, then we are in such deep trouble the mind turns to aluminum thinking of it.”
― Harlan Ellison, The Glass Teat
The book was published in 1983 , So this is hardly fresh news, but a horror story long in the making.
I think now of the time that TV came thundering on the scene and all those "backwoods" preachers and "Bible thumpers" we who were kids then looked down on for their decrying TV. They howled from pulpits about this being a thing of evil. They screamed about idolatry and we did not listen. Now we have the return of American Idol and the election of a reality show host to the US Presidency. We have movies about super-heroes who were long ago dubbed "the new gods" in a comic of the same name by comic art "legend" Jack Kirby. The visual media has always known what it was about: creating something to see that would reinforce the legends and fairy tales we found filling the void we have for the true God in our life.
So the media prepped us for that hero. One who performs the miracles as the Bible describes them. Leading me to post a song asking if we all might want to sort out our idea of Jesus the hero.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEBI0JhSzz8
But recall that there are all those false gospels out there. The gnostic ones. the Devil worshiping ones. They form the myths that draw in the False Prophet. The FP will be preaching self power as well. He will found his church in Medialand, where the money is. Again HE builds the image of the AC as god. The image that will desecrate the alter in the temple. The two villains in God's drama , in effect, exploit each other for power.
Recall how, many posts ago, we mentioned the relationship of the tribal chief and the medicine man in less technological societies. The chief ruled and the medicine man gave him "magic" for war and and the hunt. The medicine man derived power from the strength of his "magic" and the chief derived power from his own abilities and linking them to the magic. The power of the magics sometimes seem to have come from some form of demonic influence. In the case of the AC and the FP, Satan IS definitely that source of power.
The New Age has been teaching that every form of religion is acceptable so long as it doesn't teach it is the ONLY way. It implies that witchcraft is all right so long as it is white witchcraft which deals with "good" spirits ignoring the Biblical warning to avoid all spirits save the Holy Spirit. Some sources point out it is the religions derived from Abraham, that is, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, that need to be brought into the fold and in fact liberal branches of all three can be seen as not very far from the New Age notions, teaching that everyone is okay and "we don't need to evangelize them". Rob Bell's theory that no one goes to Hell comes from that corner of belief. The Emergent Church is right there, too. The result of twenty or thirty years of Gnostic thought slipped into the preaching of unsaved minister, priests, preachers. They smooth the path for transition from the real church, swept up in the Rapture to the new one under the FP.
Kyle Idleman in Gods at War summarizes the true difference between religions and the tragedy for those left with only the Devil's main disciple as the image of God:
"If someone ever asks you, "What's so special about Christianity? What sets it apart from Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or anything else?" your answer is found right here. Nowhere else do we find God in hot pursuit of people.
"God is imagined in countless ways on this planet. Maybe he lives in Mount Olympus, as the Greeks thought, and comes to Earth only occasionally, when he's bored. Maybe "he" is actually an entire pantheon of gods, as the Hindus have it; maybe there are so many of them that you need a scorecard to keep track. Maybe God is just another word for nature, as the pantheists believe, meaning that the tree outside my window is God; this chair is God; hey, you and I are God. Maybe there is no God as such, as the Buddhists have it:the answers are supposedly within us.
"Christianity offers a view of God that is strikingly different from any other. In Christianity , there is one God. He is all-powerful. He takes an active role as father to every human being. His most striking feature is not anger or power or transcendence or even creativity but instead is his relentless all-consuming love. No one would have just made up such a God. The idea is too outrageous.
...
Later, Idleman shares the story comparing sex to a birthday toy bought as a gift by a parnet only to have the parent see the child become so enamored of the toy that he doesn't spend time with the parent. He then expands upon that idea of sex as a God in a paragraph to sum up the tragedy of worshiping anything in this world:
"...How could a nice gift go so wrong?
"It happened because the gift became more important than the giver. The beauty is not meant to be so much in the thing itself, but the love that brought it about.
"This is what happens when God has to compete with his own blessings. Sex is beautiful until it loses its spiritual context. Food or other forms of pleasure are wonderful until they become ends in themselves. they become gods, and the gods become tyrants and the tyrants become slave masters."
And we can double down on that when the idols are human beings with political and economic power.
The new one idol religion will persecute all those left claiming those three religions who don't fit. Muslims will never accept a human being as God. What keeps them from taking the authentic will also keep them from the false. But the false will likely trip many of them into belief. Jews who accept Christ from the results of the battle and those chosen by God for the special mission of revival will never come under control. And the new Christians will come to worship only the Lord. Hence:
Re 7:9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;
10 And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.
11 And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God,
12 Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.
13 And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?
14 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
(KJV)
About all those saints:
https://www.gotquestions.org/tribulation-saints.html
Answer: The tribulation saints are, quite simply, saints living during the tribulation. We believe that the church will be raptured before the tribulation, but the Bible indicates that a great number of people during the tribulation will place their faith in Jesus Christ. In his vision of heaven, John sees a vast number of these tribulation saints who have been martyred by the Antichrist: “There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9). When John asks who they are, he is told, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (verse 14).
The tribulation will be a time of great trouble for the wicked, because of God’s judgments. It will also be a time of great persecution for the believers—or saints—because of the Antichrist’s persecution (Revelation 13:7). Daniel saw the Antichrist “waging war against the saints and defeating them” (Daniel 7:21). Of course, the saints’ eternal salvation is secure: Daniel also saw that “the Ancient of Days came and pronounced judgment in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came when they possessed the kingdom” (Daniel 7:22; cf. Revelation 14:12–13).
The tribulation saints will hear the gospel from several possible sources. The first is the Bible; there will be many copies of the Bible left in the world, and when God’s judgments begin to fall, many people will likely react by finding a Bible to see if prophecies are being fulfilled. Many of the tribulation saints will also have heard the gospel from the two witnesses (Revelation 11:1–13)...(More on these two next time. W.)And then there are the 144,000 Jewish missionaries who are redeemed and sealed by God during the tribulation (Revelation 7:1–8). Immediately following the description of their sealing in Revelation 7, we read of the multitudes of tribulation saints who are saved from every corner of the world (verses 9–17).
The tribulation saints will serve their Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of desperate surroundings. Faithful to the end, many of these believers will die for their faith. But in their death, they overcome; “They overcame [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” (Revelation 12:11). And God will reward them: “He who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:15–17).
We praise the Lord that the great day of trouble will also be a great day of grace. Even as God is meting out His just punishment on an unbelieving world, He will be restoring Israel to faith and extending grace to all who believe, both Jew and Gentile. God has always been in the business of saving people, and that salvation will still be available during the tribulation. Don’t wait until then, however; receive Jesus now (John 1:12).
John 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: {power: or, the right, or, privilege}
(KJV)
Satan keeps running his old lie at humanity and too many don't listen to John's words when they get preached at them. Instead, they bite like hungry trout every time. He has been preparing mankind since its beginning for this one final attack on God's living image. Since he can't create, he can only ape God exactly like a chimp miming a human gesture. That the image would serve him as the world owner instead of God. We resist God's service and we resist science that tells us we are destroying the world for temporary profit. Next time we discuss that creation of an environment Satan can love. Meanwhile ponder this when you consider our current life in the End Times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXcJUIAJNW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtIEYjNZgiU
Lyrics
You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
You might be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a business man or some high-degree thief
They may call you doctor or they may call you chief
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a business man or some high-degree thief
They may call you doctor or they may call you chief
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes you are
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk
You may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be living in another country under another name
You may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be living in another country under another name
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes you are
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
You may be a construction worker working on a home
You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome
You might own guns and you might even own tanks
You might be somebody's landlord, you might even own banks
You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome
You might own guns and you might even own tanks
You might be somebody's landlord, you might even own banks
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side
You may be workin' in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair
You may be somebody's mistress, may be somebody's heir
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side
You may be workin' in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair
You may be somebody's mistress, may be somebody's heir
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk
You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread
You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk
You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread
You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy
You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy
You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray
You may call me anything but no matter what you say
You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy
You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray
You may call me anything but no matter what you say
Still, you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
Songwriters: Bob Dylan
Gotta Serve Somebody lyrics © Bob Dylan Music Obo Special Rider Music
Unofficially, we all hate that song. It grinds on us.
In the USA, we don't believe we serve anyone. One example; our factory has workers who are supposed to shotblast parts clean and then send them on to be finished and shipped out. But some of those workers think it is in their best interest to run as many parts a possible and impress their supervisor with production. Some of the larger parts load fewer into the blast chamber than the smaller parts. Thus, unless they are closely watched and given specific orders, those workers will ignore someone who needs a larger part run even if it is listed as a priority part. The workers doing this don't seem to realize that keeping priority parts supplied is good for the company and therefore good for them. They see only their own production not the bigger picture. They also don't realize that the supervisors do pay attention to see who takes on those lower production but much needed jobs because they are aware of the bigger picture.
But that's just one example. I see workers hiding behind machines or leaning into them or even walking down an aisle reading or texting on their phones. To see something. Facebook? IMs? Ball games? Porn? Who knows? I have seen bits of all those onscreen as I've walked by someone with their phone or just a lone phone running on a work desk. None of it has anything to do with work or concentrating on work. Break times are every two hours and someone can't wait for that long to see pictures on their phone? Pictures that are what, four or five inches big?
Let me say I have likely wasted a lot of my life on video, too. But not at work. This may mean I have better priorities or it may merely mean I don't own a phone with any of the new options.
No one is the leat bit immune to that temptation to worry about our own concerns over those of others.
Contrast that to Jesus:
Php 2:5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. {fashion: or habit}
(KJV)
From The Power Delusion by Anthony Campolo Jr.:
"In Jesus, God expressed himself in a way that is shocking. He expressed himself as a god of love and in the process set aside power. The story of the baby in Bethlehem's manger is meant to be much more than the sentimental story to elicit good feelings at Christmas time. The story expresses and demonstrates the God has chosen to come to us.
"In the birth of Jesus, entered history as a vulnerable infant."
Jesus was born with all the weaknesses you and I had as children, all the surrounding dangers, all the feelings of human weakness and the temptations. He was exactly like us except for one thing. Campolo again:
"He was without sin. But He did not resist evil and live a pure life merely by depending upon Himself. Instead, it was in dependence on the Father that He found the wherewithal to conquer the temptations of the flesh. He was as weak as any of us, but He grew in fellowship with the Father and therein found strength to overcome the evil one."
He knew the truth of God and gave us the keys in obedience to the Father.
But human fancy saw him differently. Some of the Gnostic. personal power, special knowledge "gospels" showed that child Christ as striking dead other children who mocked him and another showed him snapping his fingers to put life into model pigeons made of mud. Concerning those human ideas, Campolo writes:
"These writings were never included in the Bible for obvious reasons. The stories are totally out of character with the nature of our Lord. God did not incarnate Himself as a superboy who dazzled his peers with magic tricks. The church fathers knew that Jesus grew up as one of us, taking on our frailties and weaknesses. They knew that in Jesus, God had abandoned his power and majesty in in order to present Himself as one we could imitate. If it had been otherwise, He would not have been able to ask us to be like Him."
Think on that for a moment. God wanted to let us see we could live in obedience to Him by acting in love in relationship to Him by the arrival of the Holy Spirit to indwell and enable us to be like him.
Like Him as that vulnerable human being, living in original flesh, aiming toward the tomorrow of perfect flesh, Final Flesh.
Meanwhile we know thr world wil say there is no one like the Antichrist. He will say his standard is the one that can't be met yet by us. We have to learn or grow spiritually or evolve.
So we have the contrast as to what we are in our fallen state and how God handled the state. And we know how the new religion which is Anti God will play out.
After the Israel battle which weakens Russia and her Islamic allies, humanity, with the Holy Spirit acting in special cases only, will seek after the strongest leader. One who is handsome and physically imposing like Saul. The cult of physical fitness will bow to his physique. He will likely be "self-made" rich as we see it, though no one ever becomes rich or in any state of success without help. We have J. G. wentworth telling everyone they should want their cash NOW! The AC will expect everyone to serve HIM. He will be one who praises peace and prosperity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kloRI-ywfT4
The sovereignty idea sums up the "do it ourselves" philosophy. We think we have the power as a nation to succeed. It is a subtle denial of God as the sovereign power over all. Patriotism for the alliance that the AC forms will eventually drive the confrontation between the 200 million man army and the troops rallied by the AC.
Christians know only God brings peace. Only He can offer prosperity. What we need to fill the mission He gives us.
The Addiction Network has ads telling anyone with a problem to come to them. They feature a young man in scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck. There is never any statement that the young man is a doctor so he probably is not. They are taking advantage of a study that showed we will listen to someone in the proper uniform as if they are an expert. The uniform impresses our subconscious and we listen.
The power of the AC will be his looks and the power of that will be magnified by video. He will have the power to reach all the world thanks to the news channels and satellite coverage, internet coverage where people don't have to tell anything like the truth and they can market their own goods wrapped around whatever mythology they wish to create. One internet show tells you the children at Sandyhook were not really killed and then sells you vitamins and survivalist gizmos. The key seems to be to never admit to lying and never to apologize. The egotist seems to function very well in the current media situation.
And that links the FP to the AC: media. THE media AS the modern idea of church. Not somewhere where you go to mix with your brother and sister Christians but a place in your living room where you can change the channel and find a media leader telling you things yoiu want to hear with no one to challenge your ideas. As we highlighted, the FP will set up the mark, the message, makes the AC's image the center of worship. He carries the media torch. The power of the media is obvious, but let me cite a single example from Entertainment Weekly, August 4, 2017. In an article entitled "The Woman Changing the Face of Hollywood", they feature an interview with talent agent Christy Haubegger, head of CAA's diversity initiative. When asked about results she was seeing in an effort to bring ethnic and gender diversity she responded:
"A couple years ago I got to meet Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Prize. I stayed up late finishing her autobiography, I Am Malala. And, in the book, she mentions Ugly Betty. talking about the fact Betty was a journalist and a young woman who made her think that she might want to use her voice. I sent a not to (Betty executive producer) Selma Hayek in the middle of the night, like, "Oh my gosh," I said to Selma and (Ugly Betty star America Ferrera), "Don't doubt for am moment that what you do matters. There are 7 billion people in the world and most of them will never come to the United States, but they're going to see our movies and our television. And we get to tell them what a hero looks like." (My emphasis)
Media HAS been telling them what a hero looks like for decades. He's Clint Eastwood and John Wayne. Media told our own country that one so often that having a black man's face in the White House despite all those stints by Morgan Freeman drove many in the USA raised with that old hero face to vote for anyone reminding them of that face again. And not vote for the female face that apparently scared them even more than the black MAN'S face. And we arrived at the current President who repeats the platitudes of yesterday assuring the ones who voted in nostalgia that things will be "great again."
But we see that same call to the past and the great MEN that were heroes even in Europe where the French cry for an election and hark back to a time before their socialist party ruled, a time of isolation, and England rushed to isolationist Brexit voting. The US media has bombarded everyone with those heroes.
So a new media hero fitting that description will move right in very comfortingly to those who have constant media exposure which is almost all of us.
Perhaps the most telling criticism of the effect comes from Harlan Ellison who would likely shiver at the idea of being quoted by a Christian, but here goes:
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/441835-the-glass-teat
“Ours is a society so immersed in the sea of video reactions that there are little old ladies out there who know Hoss Cartwright is more real than their next door neighbors. Everyone of value to them is an image. A totem. A phosphor-dot wraith whose hurts and triumphs are created from the magic of a scenarist’s need to make the next payment on his Porsche. (I recommend a book titled Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad, for a more complete, and horrifying analysis of this phenomenon. It’s an Avon paperback, so it shouldn’t trouble you too much to pick it up.) But because of this acceptance of the strangers who appear on the home screen, ours has become a society where shadow and reality intermix to the final elimination of any degree of rational selectivity on the part of those whose lives are manipulated: by the carnivores who flummox them, and the idols they choose to worship. I don’t know that there’s any answer to this. If we luck out and we get a John Kennedy or a Leonard Nimoy (who, strangely enough, tie in to one another by the common denominator of being humane), then we can’t call it a bad thing. But if we wind up with a public image that governs us as Ronald Reagan and Joe Pyne govern us, then we are in such deep trouble the mind turns to aluminum thinking of it.”
― Harlan Ellison, The Glass Teat
The book was published in 1983 , So this is hardly fresh news, but a horror story long in the making.
I think now of the time that TV came thundering on the scene and all those "backwoods" preachers and "Bible thumpers" we who were kids then looked down on for their decrying TV. They howled from pulpits about this being a thing of evil. They screamed about idolatry and we did not listen. Now we have the return of American Idol and the election of a reality show host to the US Presidency. We have movies about super-heroes who were long ago dubbed "the new gods" in a comic of the same name by comic art "legend" Jack Kirby. The visual media has always known what it was about: creating something to see that would reinforce the legends and fairy tales we found filling the void we have for the true God in our life.
So the media prepped us for that hero. One who performs the miracles as the Bible describes them. Leading me to post a song asking if we all might want to sort out our idea of Jesus the hero.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEBI0JhSzz8
But recall that there are all those false gospels out there. The gnostic ones. the Devil worshiping ones. They form the myths that draw in the False Prophet. The FP will be preaching self power as well. He will found his church in Medialand, where the money is. Again HE builds the image of the AC as god. The image that will desecrate the alter in the temple. The two villains in God's drama , in effect, exploit each other for power.
Recall how, many posts ago, we mentioned the relationship of the tribal chief and the medicine man in less technological societies. The chief ruled and the medicine man gave him "magic" for war and and the hunt. The medicine man derived power from the strength of his "magic" and the chief derived power from his own abilities and linking them to the magic. The power of the magics sometimes seem to have come from some form of demonic influence. In the case of the AC and the FP, Satan IS definitely that source of power.
The New Age has been teaching that every form of religion is acceptable so long as it doesn't teach it is the ONLY way. It implies that witchcraft is all right so long as it is white witchcraft which deals with "good" spirits ignoring the Biblical warning to avoid all spirits save the Holy Spirit. Some sources point out it is the religions derived from Abraham, that is, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, that need to be brought into the fold and in fact liberal branches of all three can be seen as not very far from the New Age notions, teaching that everyone is okay and "we don't need to evangelize them". Rob Bell's theory that no one goes to Hell comes from that corner of belief. The Emergent Church is right there, too. The result of twenty or thirty years of Gnostic thought slipped into the preaching of unsaved minister, priests, preachers. They smooth the path for transition from the real church, swept up in the Rapture to the new one under the FP.
Kyle Idleman in Gods at War summarizes the true difference between religions and the tragedy for those left with only the Devil's main disciple as the image of God:
"If someone ever asks you, "What's so special about Christianity? What sets it apart from Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or anything else?" your answer is found right here. Nowhere else do we find God in hot pursuit of people.
"God is imagined in countless ways on this planet. Maybe he lives in Mount Olympus, as the Greeks thought, and comes to Earth only occasionally, when he's bored. Maybe "he" is actually an entire pantheon of gods, as the Hindus have it; maybe there are so many of them that you need a scorecard to keep track. Maybe God is just another word for nature, as the pantheists believe, meaning that the tree outside my window is God; this chair is God; hey, you and I are God. Maybe there is no God as such, as the Buddhists have it:the answers are supposedly within us.
"Christianity offers a view of God that is strikingly different from any other. In Christianity , there is one God. He is all-powerful. He takes an active role as father to every human being. His most striking feature is not anger or power or transcendence or even creativity but instead is his relentless all-consuming love. No one would have just made up such a God. The idea is too outrageous.
...
Later, Idleman shares the story comparing sex to a birthday toy bought as a gift by a parnet only to have the parent see the child become so enamored of the toy that he doesn't spend time with the parent. He then expands upon that idea of sex as a God in a paragraph to sum up the tragedy of worshiping anything in this world:
"...How could a nice gift go so wrong?
"It happened because the gift became more important than the giver. The beauty is not meant to be so much in the thing itself, but the love that brought it about.
"This is what happens when God has to compete with his own blessings. Sex is beautiful until it loses its spiritual context. Food or other forms of pleasure are wonderful until they become ends in themselves. they become gods, and the gods become tyrants and the tyrants become slave masters."
And we can double down on that when the idols are human beings with political and economic power.
The new one idol religion will persecute all those left claiming those three religions who don't fit. Muslims will never accept a human being as God. What keeps them from taking the authentic will also keep them from the false. But the false will likely trip many of them into belief. Jews who accept Christ from the results of the battle and those chosen by God for the special mission of revival will never come under control. And the new Christians will come to worship only the Lord. Hence:
Re 7:9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;
10 And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.
11 And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God,
12 Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.
13 And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?
14 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
(KJV)
About all those saints:
https://www.gotquestions.org/tribulation-saints.html
Answer: The tribulation saints are, quite simply, saints living during the tribulation. We believe that the church will be raptured before the tribulation, but the Bible indicates that a great number of people during the tribulation will place their faith in Jesus Christ. In his vision of heaven, John sees a vast number of these tribulation saints who have been martyred by the Antichrist: “There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9). When John asks who they are, he is told, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (verse 14).
The tribulation will be a time of great trouble for the wicked, because of God’s judgments. It will also be a time of great persecution for the believers—or saints—because of the Antichrist’s persecution (Revelation 13:7). Daniel saw the Antichrist “waging war against the saints and defeating them” (Daniel 7:21). Of course, the saints’ eternal salvation is secure: Daniel also saw that “the Ancient of Days came and pronounced judgment in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came when they possessed the kingdom” (Daniel 7:22; cf. Revelation 14:12–13).
The tribulation saints will hear the gospel from several possible sources. The first is the Bible; there will be many copies of the Bible left in the world, and when God’s judgments begin to fall, many people will likely react by finding a Bible to see if prophecies are being fulfilled. Many of the tribulation saints will also have heard the gospel from the two witnesses (Revelation 11:1–13)...(More on these two next time. W.)And then there are the 144,000 Jewish missionaries who are redeemed and sealed by God during the tribulation (Revelation 7:1–8). Immediately following the description of their sealing in Revelation 7, we read of the multitudes of tribulation saints who are saved from every corner of the world (verses 9–17).
The tribulation saints will serve their Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of desperate surroundings. Faithful to the end, many of these believers will die for their faith. But in their death, they overcome; “They overcame [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” (Revelation 12:11). And God will reward them: “He who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:15–17).
We praise the Lord that the great day of trouble will also be a great day of grace. Even as God is meting out His just punishment on an unbelieving world, He will be restoring Israel to faith and extending grace to all who believe, both Jew and Gentile. God has always been in the business of saving people, and that salvation will still be available during the tribulation. Don’t wait until then, however; receive Jesus now (John 1:12).
John 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: {power: or, the right, or, privilege}
(KJV)
Satan keeps running his old lie at humanity and too many don't listen to John's words when they get preached at them. Instead, they bite like hungry trout every time. He has been preparing mankind since its beginning for this one final attack on God's living image. Since he can't create, he can only ape God exactly like a chimp miming a human gesture. That the image would serve him as the world owner instead of God. We resist God's service and we resist science that tells us we are destroying the world for temporary profit. Next time we discuss that creation of an environment Satan can love. Meanwhile ponder this when you consider our current life in the End Times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXcJUIAJNW0
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