I must admit up front that I’ve delved into now ancient archives of my own thoughts in writing this week’s column. The things under consideration, however, are more relevant than ever. As a matter of fact, it becomes quite fascinating to look back at earlier times of analyses of issues and events. New perspectives and postulations can sometimes be derived from such retrospective.

Quite a few years ago, I put together (as general editor) a book with a number of prophecy scholars, broadcasters, and writers. That book was called Foreshocks of Antichrist. Its chapters dealt with issues and events of the times that the other authors and I believed were significant in considering prophecies about Antichrist coming to power, as described in the books of Daniel, Revelation, 1 John, and others.

That was about 1996, I think, and I believed at the time that conditions couldn’t ripen much more so far as the world being ready to reap the bitter harvest concerning what the Antichrist will bring.

I was wrong, of course, which proves we must never be too quick to think things can’t get much worse. They can get worse—and they have, since my late mentors/colleagues such as Dr. John Walvoord, Dr. Dave Breese, Zola Levitt, Dr. Tim LaHaye, and many others dissected the issues with the scalpel of God’s Word in that Harvest House book.

The shadow of the coming Antichrist looms more ominously than ever.

All one must do is to consider the following report I used many years ago to see that dictatorship might be right around the proverbial corner. An Austrian newspaper reported the following result of a question posed to the citizenry of that nation: What was their opinion of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi annexation during World War II?

Reuters Report—May 21, 2013:

Forty-two percent said life was not all bad under Hitler, while sixty-one percent said they would be interested in a strong-armed leader who did not have to deal with democratic challenges like political opponents and elections. The survey, published this weekend, is getting prominent play in the media in Israel, which is home to some 250,000 Holocaust survivors.

Antichrist and the False Prophet of Revelation chapter 13 will be the ultimate, final dictatorship. Their regime will be the driver of the geopolitical and religious juggernaut that will crush anyone and anything that opposes it during the Tribulation era. The engine that will power Satan’s cruel, soul-rending Beast of Revelation 13:1–2 will be an all-controlling, enslaving economy. We see the Beast described as follows:

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. (Revelation 13:1–2)

The control that Beast will wield is described in this way:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. (Revelation 13:16–17)

The technologies for setting up just such a system of control over the people of the world have grown exponentially during the past several decades. Computer-satellite hook-ups between continents, linking most of the world in a geometrically progressing network of electronic funds transfer capability, brings this generation ever closer to the type of control prophesied in those familiar passages of Scripture.

The United States of America, the most materially blessed nation on earth, has been concentric to the global networking. Most of the great contributions to the computer and satellite revolution have been spawned from this country. But other super-industrious peoples around the globe continue the “progress.” Other nations are now taking the relevant technologies to new levels of “achievement.” Now, it is America who seems to be dragging its feet in bringing in economic Utopia—or so it would seem…

As we looked at these matters of international finance more than a decade ago, it appeared that the US was the hold-up to bringing in a new world financial order. The refusal to relinquish paper and coinage as currency was viewed as blocking the establishment of that changed monetary order.

With the unbelievable swiftness of movement involving all things fiscal since those earlier times, it becomes obvious that the powers that drive monetary movement determined to keep hard currencies in place with the US dollar as the standard (until other dynamics of financial interlinkages brought sufficient chaos) to create critical need for a system other than paper and coins to avert world economic disaster.

The United States’ great wealth and power, represented in the mighty dollar, was thus held high as criterion for international trade until just the right political changes within America had been engineered. That political change has, as of the coming of the Obama administration, now begun—and in a big way. The dollar’s fate is sealed. The advent of such profound technological intrusions as AI and Bitcoin is assuring the fate of paper and coinage.

Is America, then, a stumbling block to, or a catalyst for, the emerging system that will almost certainly serve as the framework for Antichrist’s Revelation 13 hegemony over the earth?

Rationale prompts one to believe something must happen to cause the US citizenship to come around to accepting a total e-money solution to the confusing state of currency exchanges, et cetera. But the process is agonizingly slow and would likely have to take place with powerful opposition from the American Congress and its constituencies and lobbyists.

Many observers of Bible prophecy, including yours truly, can’t see it taking decades for such a situation to develop. That is, we can’t imagine a scenario that would allow, in America, a lengthy transition to the coming global order essential to the future Antichrist regime’s system of control. This is because most other prophesied signals for the Tribulation appear to now be in place for setting the stage for the Tribulation.

In assessing all of this, Pete Garcia and I have just completed a book to soon be published by Defender Publishing with the title The Machine That Speaks: Building the Beast’s Image in Silicon Valley.

Again, the factor that fits perfectly into a scenario in which America is instantly brought to such a state of chaos that it acquiesces to the world’s call for a cashless system of digital economics, is—you guessed it—the Rapture!