Jesus Christ Himself gave the very first sign to look for in answer to His immediately present disciples’ question: “What shall be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

The Lord answered: “And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you” (Matthew 24:4a).

Jesus continued by applying the deception that would mark His return and the end of the age to that involving the deceivers claiming to be Christ Himself. That has proven to be the case.  There have been within every generation those who claimed to be the Christ. However, the matter of this end-times deception goes much, much deeper, and there is great evidence that the greatly increased deception Jesus warned of is full-blown in every facet of the world today.

As a matter of fact, there is deception within deception taking place, which I hope to show as we proceed. That strange, intramural conflict amongst end-times deceivers is, I’m convicted, perhaps God’s having the evilest among us in derision, as given in Psalm 2. Perhaps it is the restraining hand of God the Holy Spirit slowing the Ephesians 6:12 cabal of demonic and human minions in their drive to establish Antichrist’s regime before its appointed time.

I wrote of this rage by the global cabal to bring in their New World Order in the introduction to our book of compilation, DECEIVERS: Exposing Evil Seducers and Their Last-Days Deception. 

Satan, the grand deceiver, continues to mesmerize much of the American populace… The reprobate mind of Romans chapter 1 is now the norm more than the aberration.

Satanic rage against anyone who opposes his global agenda to bring all into a new world order is front and center each and every hour in news headlines. His deceivers—his minions both human and demonic—are busy building upon his deadly blueprint to bring about destruction of America and the world.

The apostle Paul’s forewarning of the coming end-times deception and delusion that appear to be just ahead are ringing like alarm bells in spiritually attuned ears:

“For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-11).

These wicked antagonist-rival forces that are spawned by the same source–Satan—are fighting over, of all things, deception!

Here is information to that effect.

[Because of AI deception] the World Economic Forum has now declared “Disinformation” to be the world’s greatest threat according to their 2024 “Global Risks Report,” which will obviously require more control over free speech. —WEF founder and chairman, Klaus Schwab

As Jonathan Turley writes in a Friday note:

The report shows just how engrained this anti-free speech movement has become among the world elite from media to business to politics.

The absurd finding is consistent with the warning of other international figures and groups. We previously discussed how WHO Director-General Tudors Adhanom Ghebreyesus has supported censorship to combat what he calls the “infodemic.”…

Yet, we’ve now gone beyond simple “disinformation.” The world is now under threat from “AI-Powered” Disinformation!

According to the Financial Times, disinformation created via artificial intelligence is on the horizon. The outlet points to an incident during the September elections in Slovakia – in which a mysterious recording of the liberal opposition candidate, Michal Šimečka, could be heard plotting with a journalist to buy votes and rig the result. Yet, the recording was fake. The Slovakian police warned voters to be cautious online of nefarious actors with “vested interests.”

Šimečka lost the election to a populist “pro-Russia rival,” which, of course, the FT uses to imply Russia was behind the recording and the threat to democracy is greater than ever before!

Online disinformation has been a factor in elections for many years. But recent, rapid advances in AI technology mean that it is cheaper and easier than ever to manipulate media, thanks to a brisk new market of powerful tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, AI art start-up Midjourney, or other text, audio, and video generators. At the same time, manipulated or synthetic media is becoming increasingly hard to spot. (“Disinformation ‘Doomsday Scenario’: AI-Powered Propaganda Is the Latest Threat to Humanity (That Must Be Censored),’ ZeroHedge, Tyler Durden, 1/12/24)

What this all means–and it is hard to follow—is that Klaus Schwab and the WEF and other would-be New World Order builders can’t control the manipulation of elections and other things that go against their drive to bring in complete control under their auspices. AI (artificial intelligence), which they no doubt have been greatly influential in creating, has gotten out of their control.

AI is being used by operatives not under the globalists’ control to use the technology to create phony conversations that sound exactly like candidates, etc.—i.e., deception is being created by AI to make the New World Order builders’ candidates look evil in the eyes of voters, etc.

This group of deceivers is using AI to do the same thing to the WEF types that the WEF types intended to do to them: put deceptive information into the eyes and ears of voters and other constituent entities.

AI is indeed deception on steroids.

When the Church of Jesus Christ is called from planet Earth and God’s restraining hand, the Holy Spirit, withdraws the same degree of constraint to the wicked minions, AI will no doubt be allowed to come under Antichrist’s satanic authority for a period of time.

You don’t want to be here during that time. Here’s how to instead be with the God who loves you and gave His only begotten Son as a sacrifice so that you can be saved and be with Him throughout eternity.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).

I was sitting in a hotel restaurant in Dallas where the pre-Trib Study Group founded by Dr. Tim LaHaye had its annual meetings during the 1990s. We were awaiting delivery of our breakfasts, when I watched a friend—a well known Christian-Jewish ministry television host—approach our table.

He sounded chagrined, his face, according to another friend sitting beside me, not the usual smiling countenance we all were accustomed to witnessing. He shook my hand and I said, using his name, “What’s wrong? You have a bad flight?”

He had just returned from Israel, where he had conducted services and did television programming.

He began by saying in a disgusted tone, “I just don’t know why God made Arabs.”

My reaction was, “Well (his name)…”

Before I could say anything else other than express my being unable to say anything, he said in even a more disgusted tone and with greater fervor, “Well d*** it, Terry, I mean it…”

I was both amused and somewhat amazed to hear such foul language from my great friend.

He went on to explain how one Arab Muslim contingent or the other had physically attacked in an act of terrorism while he and his crew were near the Temple Mount, as I recall. This evil activity, of course, wasn’t unusual, and continues to this day, decades later, and even increases in ferocity, as we’ve recently seen with Hamas’ brutal slaughter of Jews and others on October 7 of the year just past.

Without any doubt, my friend, now gone to be with the Lord, knew better than just about anyone on the planet the story of Abraham going to Sarah’s handmaiden Hagar, how his wife told Abraham to produce a child with Hagar because it was obvious to her that at her age she would have no more children.

My famous friend knew Abraham and Sarah got ahead of God’s great plan to bring Isaac into the world through that couple’s union. The birth indeed happened by the time Abraham’s son by Hagar, Ishmael, became a teenager.

So that, of course, was, to answer my friend’s angrily posed question, why Arabs were eventually “made,” as my friend put it. But his demeanor exemplifies to this day the Jewish-Arab raging differences that seem to have no end in sight.

An article somewhat frames the never-ending things involved in that ever more violent and expansive conflict.

[Regarding the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 and its aftermath, the article states:] But the depth and scope of this crisis require a comprehensive cultural and spiritual rethinking of how we perceive ourselves and the enemy, focusing on the question of why the enemy fights and what we are fighting for.

Hamas and Hezbollah fight out of religious belief. By contrast, we are not clear on our reasons for uniting to fight wars beyond our desire to safeguard our existence and survival.

A.B. Yehoshua once posed an existential question: “Nation of Israel, for what purpose do you live?” Later, he clarified: “Survival is considered the most prominent aspect of the Jewish people…but it is not survival that is the prominent aspect, but rather how it is done, what its agenda is, what values it holds, and primarily, what its cost is.” (A. B. Yehoshua, Haaretz Books Supplement, 20.2.2013)

This question must be applied to clarify the central inquiry: Nation of Israel, for what purpose do you fight, and how do you fight? (“A Clear Post-War National Vision Means Returning to the Roots of Zionism,”Gershon Hacohen, Opinion Algemeiner, Rapture Ready News, January 11, 2024 )

The above piece demonstrates Israel’s blindness to what’s going on with regard to the evil perpetrated incessantly against the Jewish race—against Israel the nation. They can’t get a grasp on all the things that are driving and tugging His chosen people and nation back toward the God who loves them with all of His majestic being.

“Why the Arab versus the Jew?” is a monumental and seemingly insurmountable question, to be sure. Some believe it is the holdup to even world peace, not to mention Mideast regional peace. In fact, to those of us who believe God’s Word is absolutely true in every respect, this is the case. The Jewish/Arab problem will eventually involve the whole world and will ultimately bring all the nations into the killing field called Armageddon.

Zechariah the prophet foretells that Israel will become a “burdensome stone and a cup of trembling” to the entire world. Paul the apostle foretold that there will be a great “cry of peace and safety” that will cause “sudden destruction.”

It is obvious that the great conflict between these antagonists–the Jews and the Arabs—is what is now causing the most profound angst within the world’s diplomatic sphere.

These would-be world masters–the globalist ringmasters—constantly try to force a two-state solution to the great conflict they believe more than any other on the planet threatens the ignition of nuclear war and the end of humankind.

And it is this very matter–the tearing apart of God’s land granted to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—by the powers and principalities of the global cabal that will fulfill prophecy that brings everything to a head.

Again, Joel tells of this in the starkest of terms.

For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land. (Joel 3:1–2)

Many believe the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, could be a primary catalyst for bringing Zechariah and Joel’s prophecies to fruition. Regardless, our witness of Israel now at the center of hatred practically everywhere on earth–especially hatred by the young in universities across the world—lends credence to the likelihood that pressures to force Israel to make peace from many directions could bring God’s great hand of judgment.

That judgment will begin with His calling all believers in His Son, Jesus Christ, out of this world of rebels, to safe harbor in the Rapture. Here is how to be within that safe harbor, while wrath and judgment ravage the planet.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9–10)

The great prophet Daniel was given immense prophetic foreknowledge. He saw the rise of kingdoms and their leading protagonists. He saw the end of all these world kingdoms and their kings, or hierarchy.  Yet he wasn’t allowed to know the finale of things with regard to either his beloved nation Israel or of the planet—at least not in significant detail.

He wasn’t permitted to see what I believe you and I are presently allowed to witness regarding the wrapping up of “all these things,” which Jesus told us to look for as recorded in Luke 21:28. And anyone who is biblically centered and “watching,” as we are told to do by the Lord, according to Mark 13:37, is witnessing phenomenal stage-setting for the end of the age and the beginning of Daniel’s seventieth week—the Tribulation.

Here is what the prophet was told by the angel in their exchange when Daniel desired to know what would be the end of his people:

But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. (Daniel 12:4) 

Daniel responded as follows:

And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. (Daniel 12:8–9)

Many observers of the times—including yours truly—believe those words and that book are now being opened for us to discern these end-of-the-age hours leading to the triumphant return of Christ.

One of the most fascinating aspects of “watching” all of the developments, to me at least, is the rise of dictators and their being allowed by Heaven to do their wickedness. And, I include in that evil group many of the leaders within the American political power structure, both elected and appointed, or even just inserted within that structure because of the influence their wealth gives them.

We have watched them do all within their deception and conniving efforts to change this nation into one totally ruled by insane policies and would-be tyrannical enslavement. They haven’t yet reached the level of an Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, or even a Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. But they want to bring America into their own view of what the world should look like. And that view is them at the top, with the rest of us here to serve them. This is the human minion element within the Ephesians 6:12 cabal against which we who name the name of Christ wrestle, as Paul put it.

So, in hearing the new speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaking , his words tripped my curiosity meter that maybe is a bit like the prophet Daniel felt, regarding his wanting to know the end of all this worldly wickedness.

Speaker Johnson’s words were as follows.

“I don’t believe there are any coincidences in a [matter] like this,” Johnson said during his Oct. 25 acceptance speech in the House chamber. “I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear that God is the One that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you, all of us, and I believe that God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment in this time. This is my belief. I believe that each one of us has a huge responsibility today to use the gifts that God has given us to serve the extraordinary people of this great country, and they deserve it, and to ensure that our republic remains standing as the great beacon of light and hope and freedom in a world that desperately needs it.”

Now, Mr. Johnson is an outspoken devout Christian, and I applaud his standing up and declaring that God’s way is the way business should be done. I’m thankful he has been placed in that important position at this critical time in our nation’s movement through history.

But the thought struck. Yes. I believe God raised up Mike Johnson for this moment. And I believe that God raises up all men who achieve powers to govern. Johnson’s belief is based upon Daniel’s words.

Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding: He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him. (Daniel 2:19–22)

Daniel, the great man of God, had it right, of course. He affirms with all his heart that God is in complete control at all times, and nothing is done without His being in control.

But the key here for purposes of our commentary title are the prophet’s inspired words: “he removeth kings, and setteth upkings.”

God does indeed raise up leaders, as Mike Johnson told those in his audience–some of whom are themselves deeply into that wicked Ephesians 6:12 cabal. And the question piques my curiosity, like it probably does yours.

Why, if God controls everything, does He permit these evil sorts to achieve power and do the dastardly things they do? Like, for example, why were the leaders of that Hamas terrorist pack of demonically-inspired horde allowed to plan and carry out such blood-drenched atrocities October 7?

The answer that comes to me isn’t one that takes away the intense fervor of the question. But it does provide comfort. I think that while our finite minds can’t understand fully such an Infinite dealing by a sovereign God with such an absolutely incomprehensible evil as wrapped up in the thing called sin, to accept that God is in control, no matter how things look otherwise, is a faith-building matter. Daniel’s story of his faith is most relevant to acceptance that God is using all the sin-saturated activities by even the most evil of world leaders to ultimately bring all things back to perfection that was lost when iniquity entered Lucifer’s mind.

So God, who knows the end from the beginning, raises dictators as well as godly people to do His bidding. Antichrist will come on the scene and will accomplish God’s great purpose. Like Daniel counted on that truth–we can count on it too!