Nothing currently in view in geopolitics or even in socioeconomics or religious developments more clearly points to the lateness of the prophetic hour than the pope’s recent treacherous dealings with God’s chosen nation.

This pontiff has consistently and persistently poked his papal finger into the center of Israeli affairs as pertains to that nation’s dealings with its blood-vowed enemies.

This isn’t particularly surprising, due to the fact that the Vatican, whomever the pope, looks at Israel as having lost any and all rights to claims of God’s prophetic promises. This so-called Vicar of Christ continues to expand the boundaries of the Catholic Church’s replacement theology. That is, he continues to perpetuate the false declaration that the Catholic Church has replaced the Jews and the nation of Israel in God’s view, because the Jews rejected and murdered Christ.

In the Vatican’s view—and that regime is a government as much as any other—Israel today is no more than another government. And in many ways, the Catholic Church—like Israel’s surrounding enemy nations and, in fact, much of the world—looks at the Jewish state as an illegitimate “occupier” of land belonging to the so-called Palestinians. This is the prevailing, hostile attitude of almost all of the national entities making up the United Nations. Votes in that body consistently go against Israel when given the opportunities.

There have been times that, if not for the United States having a total veto on votes taken in the UN, Israel, if Heaven were not involved, would have long ago likely not survived as a national entity. Of course, we know that is an impossibility. God has said the following.

And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. (Genesis 17:7–8)

But, not unlike our own state department as of late, this pope has no qualms about treating Israel like the proverbial red-headed stepchild. Without invitation by anyone in charge of Israeli affairs—as far as has been divulged—Pope Francis is perpetrating perhaps the one evil against God’s chosen nation that could prompt the Almighty to bring about His wrath on a cataclysmic scale.

The story of that unwelcomed papal intrusion is seen through the following news item.

Pope Francis met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday. At the meeting, the Pope emphasized the importance of the “Two-State Solution” which would create an unprecedented Arab state inside of Israel’s borders, ethnically cleansed of Jews, with its capital in the section of Jerusalem containing Judaism’s holiest site.…

The talk “stressed that it is absolutely necessary to reactivate direct dialogue in order to achieve a two-state solution, also with the help of more vigorous effort on the part of the international community.”…

The term “Abrahamic religions” took on a specific meaning when the Pope led a “Prayer of the sons and daughters of Abraham” at the Great Ziggurat of Ur in Iraq which is purported by some to be the birthplace of Biblical Abraham. Despite the title of the event implying that all of Abraham’s offspring would be represented, the event brought together Muslims, Catholics, and Christians but no Jews were present.

The Pope presented Abbas with a copy of the Document on Human Fraternity, which he signed with the Grand Imam of Al Azhar in Abu Dhabi in 2019. The document has been widely criticized as advocating for a one-world-religion, combining Catholicism and Islam. (“Pope meets Abbas, wants to divide Israel and give Temple Mount to Arabs, Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Israel365news, 11/5/21)

The pope’s actions, again, point to the lateness of the prophetic hour. We consistently examine all the issues and events and developments in every aspect of things going on today as the Tribulation era looms heavily on history’s horizon. No sign is more indicative of just how close that time of God’s holy judgment and wrath is than this attempt to divide god’s beloved land of promise.

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) 

For the Christian, this is not a reason to fear punishment that will lead to Armageddon. That time of wrath is reserved for those who want to divide Israel. This action by the pope and other globalist elites, in fact, means that Christ’s call to the true Church—all born-again believers in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ for salvation—must be right at the door.

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. (Revelation 22:20)

Thanks to an emailer friend recently, this postulation, in the form of a question, emerged to the forefront of my cerebral ruminations. Is the vaccine mandate madness, and particularly the COVID-19 virus which it involves, a part of Bible prophecy?

The many signals of end times prophecy we have witnessed and continue to witness, proliferating in frequency and with intensity, make the postulation/question highly pertinent, I think. Is the Jab, an all-pervasive matter so at the center of all the signs, a prophetic indicator of Christ’s Second Coming?

The emailer said she recently heard preachers/teachers mention Rev 18: 23 … “for by your sorceries were all the nations deceived.” This “vaccination,” she said, “sure has been, and still is, a huge deception.” 

It sure has been exactly that…! So we need to examine this prophetic passage.

“And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived” (Rev 18:23).

This prophecy/condemnation given John by the Lord Jesus, Who is the Word, is part of the judgment of the city called “Babylon,” which will take place near the end of the Tribulation. That judgment from Heaven is God’s Holy Wrath poured on this system of evil that has deceived and corrupted all of mankind. This Babylon is the apex –the ultimate manifestation—of the globalists’ attempt to throw off all Governance of the Creator of all that is. It is God bringing to Fulfillment His prophetic utterance found in the Old Testament.

“The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision” (Psalms 2:2-4).

Thus will the final assault on humanity and upon God, like in the days of Nimrod’s Tower of Babel wickedness, be thrown down. At the heart of that wickedness is the evil that God’s Word terms “sorceries.”

This designation, “sorceries,” has very interesting connotations in regard to developments since the so-called pandemic plaguing the world since 2020. We consider the Greek dissection of the term, given in the New Testament. Here is what I found when researching the term briefly.

Sorceries is from the Greek φαρμακεια, or pharmakeia, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance number 5331, is said to mean “medication, “pharmacy,” magic, literally or figuratively – sorcery, witchcraft.”

So sorceries in Revelation 18:23 can mean both that the merchants as world traders of Babylon drug the nations with their medications, but also in a broader sense, Babylon and her merchants, the giant international corporations, deceive the world by their more figurative “magic” or witchcraft, the allure and bait of these merchants to appeal to the flesh of men. (www.talkjesus.com/threads/more-on-revelation-18-23-by-thy-sorceries-were-all-na.44635/)

It seems that at the center of the globalist elite blueprint for the enslavement of mankind to corruptive, destructive activity is this thing called” pharmakeia.” It is the root of the word sorceries in this prophecy.

All we have to do to understand what is at the center of the COVID controversy today – whether to Jab or not to Jab— is to remember the chaos surrounding what the press terms “big Pharma.” These pharmaceutical behemoths have produced the serums called vaccines, almost all of which have been untested to the extent that has been required of every other such injectable material throughout modern scientific history.

The “Jab” has set on fire anger and disruptive actions throughout the nation and world. Dictates by politicians who relish the absolute power mentioned by Lord Edward Acton prove his renowned apothegm: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The vaccine power grab as it might be legitimately called, seems beyond any doubt – to me, at least, to foreshadow the one who will demand absolute control. He will be of his father, the devil, who is, as scripture tells us, the father of lies. That is, the progenitor of great deception at every level of human interaction.

So I believe we can conclude that – yes – the Jab” is indeed prophetic. It looks to be a major stage-setting utility for producing the platform from which to launch Satan’s son of perdition.

But that earlier Psalms prophecy gives us the final disposition of Antichrist’s short-lived reign.

“Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession” (Psalms 2:5-8).

Like it or not, the pope of the Roman Catholic Church, in the world’s view, represents the vast body that view calls Christendom. Increasingly, the current pope is in the news and leading the way in globalization.

I receive an email newsletter at least three times a week from a source called These Last Days Ministries. It is immersed in Catholicism in every aspect, including Mariology and all that idolatrous system entails. Yet those who put out the newsletter seem to hold to the pre-Trib view of Bible prophecy.  They believe in the Rapture, I presume. However, it is the Rapture of all within Catholicism they embrace—again, I presume.

There is one thing sure about this group we can agree. Well, maybe several things…

They see this present world system as being on the trajectory toward globalism, and as being a precursor to the Antichrist regime. They believe the COVID-19 matter is a tool contrived to help achieve that world order. One other thing, and this is something they consistently bring to the forefront in their newsletters. They don’t like this pope and believe him to be, if not the false prophet of Revelation 13, certainly an anti-Christian, from the Roman Catholic viewpoint. I can agree to these things without reservation.

In that regard, I maintain the title of this commentary is most appropriate: “Pope at Apex of Antichrist’s Arrival.”

These Last Days Ministries sends out many “prophecies” given by those who they say receive such messages directly from God or from some saint—again, I presume. These, of course, are of no interest to yours truly. But the news articles they send are often more on the mark than many articles I receive from other sources. With regard to this present pope being at the forefront of the globalist assault on America and the world, one item I recently found in my in-box spotlights, in my opinion, the Vatican’s current diabolical collusion with the powers and principalities of Ephesians 6:12.

Three Swiss Guards have resigned and three others have been suspended after refusing to comply with a Vatican mandate that they get the COVID-19 vaccination.

The Swiss Guards, colloquially known as the Pope’s bodyguards, had previously been ordered “to protect their health and that of the others they come into contact with as part of their service” by getting the jab.

The mandate was part of a broader instruction to all Vatican employees to get the COVID shot or face losing their jobs.

“Besides the three guardsmen sent back to Switzerland, at least three others were suspended from active duty after they agreed to vaccinate but have yet to receive their jabs,” reports RT.

The fact that there is no religious exemption against taking the vaccine within the Vatican tells you everything you need to know about the Vatican and the Pope.

Pope Francis has repeatedly amplified pro-vaccination narratives and refused to extend any understanding to Catholics who are hesitant to take the jab.

The Pontifical Academy for Life, the official bioethics academy of the Catholic Church, has also insisted that it is a “moral responsibility” for Catholics to take the vaccine.

“The Vatican has said that it considers it acceptable for Catholics to use vaccines, even those that use stem cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research,” reported the Mail…

As we highlight in the video below, by enforcing vaccine mandates, the Pope is also enforcing vaccine passports, which some Catholics would argue represent something not too dissimilar from the Mark of the Beast from the book of Revelations [The article writer’s misspelling].

Wow, so Christian! (“Pope’s Swiss Guards Resign over Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccinati,” Paul Joseph Watson, Summit.news, 10/4/21)

Many among the Bible prophecy community—both of the pre-Trib belief and of other views—have long thought this pope to possibly be the False Prophet of Revelation 13—despite his advancing age. We can all agree that this pope certainly proclaims teachings contrary to the teachings of God’s Holy Word.

He has said on more than several occasions that there other ways to God, Heaven, and salvation of the soul than through belief in Jesus Christ alone. He has backed up those political minions in high places within the Catholic Church, giving them a pass on the murder of millions of babies through the abortion process. He has embraced at every opportunity the climate-change madness and the worship of Mother Earth and the Gaia mantra that we must all come together to save the planet.

He joins the totally reprobate purveyors of insanity who demand that all must either submit to an experimental, highly questionable injection or be excluded from the formerly normal activities of the compliant human community.

This, of course, comes very close indeed to what God has said Antichrist and his False Prophet will demand. Again, our article’s heading is not far from the truth!

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)

As Halloween nears, a summit is scheduled, and the things the meetings mask are grotesque.

Pope Francis and President Joe Biden have been shown to be instruments of the growing evil that afflicts this end-times generation. At least their statements and policy dictates, in the biblical view of moral matters involving humanity, have been exposed as Ephesians 6:12-level wickedness.

The following report by a mainstream paper in league with those policies and dictates frames the upcoming meeting.

President Biden will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Oct. 29 during a trip to Europe for two high-profile global summits, the White House announced Thursday.

Biden and Francis will discuss “working together on efforts grounded in respect for fundamental human dignity, including ending the COVID-19 pandemic, tackling the climate crisis, and caring for the poor,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.

Biden, the United States’ second Catholic president, has been at the center of a debate within the Catholic Church about whether he should be able to receive Communion because of his support for abortion rights.

First lady Jill Biden will join her husband in meeting Francis. Biden will already be traveling to Rome for the Group of 20 summit, hosted by Italy. His meeting with the pope had been widely anticipated. (“Biden to meet with Pope Francis to discuss coronavirus, climate change, poverty,” Seung Min Kim and Michelle Boorstein, The Washington Post)

As stated, Biden will be in Rome for the G20 Leaders’ Summit October 30–31. It is a fitting time, perhaps, coming at Halloween. He will next travel to Glasgow, Scotland, November 1–2 to be part of the World Leader Summit in the COP26 climate-change gathering.

The Catholic pontiff and Biden will, according to the report, engage in an effort to bring the so-called COVID-19 pandemic to an end. They will work to find ways to end climate change, and to make sure all peoples can live in dignity and peace, with equity for all. And, it is through redistribution of America’s wealth (what is left of it) that they intend to achieve that equity.

They will put the Halloween mask on the matter of good Catholic Biden’s championing the slaughter of millions of babies in their mothers’ wombs—a large percentage of those children black. They will mask the fact that he and his political party—along with the mainstream media that totally supports his wicked policies—are destroying American liberty at every turn with his demands that we receive untested vaccines—vaccines that statistics increasingly show are causing growing numbers of injuries and deaths.

The pope, himself wearing a mask that hides his true agenda, will no doubt give the American occupant of the White House a pass on the matter of abortion. His mask obviously has two mouth holes. He says from one side that abortion is murder. He says from the other that the Catholic Church’s position is “pastoral,” and that the issue of abortion is “political.”

While I can’t say for certain what he means, I presume he means that the Catholic Church needs to butt out of the issue—at least as it concerns Joe Biden’s support for the murder of babies in the womb.

The sad thing to consider is that the masking as we approach Halloween this year has strong, biblically prophetic overtones. The masking—not just of most of humanity, but of much of what was until a year or two ago considered logical, moral, and sane—now is made, at best, gnarled and grotesque by the mask-demons—the minions, both human and demonic of Ephesians 6:12.

The closer we come to understanding that we are at the very end of this Church Age (Age of Grace), the better we see the prophetic application. While God’s restraining hand is, thankfully, still active during these closing moments of this dispensation, the devil and his minions are busy masking everything and everybody—preparing planet earth for the delusion that is soon to come on an unbelieving world of rebels.

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:11–12)

It seems to me that Satan’s plan for all of humanity is pretty well encapsulated in one verse:

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

God’s indictment here seems to point to Satan’s hatred for and desire to destroy true believers. However, today’s hourly news increasingly shows that the fallen one’s murderous rampage is against all of mankind.

We don’t have to search far to make the case.

The devil and his minions are increasing their concerted assault. We’ve looked often at proof that the “principalities and powers in high places” (Ephesians 6:12) are at work today. But that wickedness has, within just the past couple of years, accelerated in astonishing ways.

Many of us have concluded that no single person or group could orchestrate the kinds of evil we’re witnessing. The flow of destructive effort is beyond human ability. Those carrying out the concerted assault are following a blueprint given them—whether they know it or not—by the same one accused by God in the verse above. Lucifer is the master director of the movement toward what the human minions of Ephesians 6:12 are now calling the “Great Reset.”

Symptoms of this flow of wickedness throughout society and culture can’t be missed by Christians (and even secular, morality-centered, common-sense people) who aren’t hiding their heads in the sands of daily life. The compiling evidence is just too “in our face.”

Let’s consider a few of the more overt actions being used to bring America and much of the world into compliance with the plan Lucifer and his minions are using to corrupt and ultimately bring down humankind.

The plan to herd Americans—and eventually, all people—into the one-world corral, I believe it has become clear, has as its black heart what my friend, the late Chuck Missler, once called a “micro-beast.”

This infinitesimally tiny virus is doing to American liberty what no outside enemy could do. It is being used to force compliance with the blueprint that anti-God, anti-Christ governmental controllers intend to use in order to bring about—again, wittingly and/or unwittingly—the Great Reset that will eventuate in the forming of Antichrist’s beast regime.

We are literally seeing day by day, hour by hour, the minions closing the noose. Or, perhaps a better simile would be that we’re witnessing the masses being herded into the one-world corral. COVID and all of its proclaimed variants are forcing this end-times movement toward fulfillment of Bible prophecy at a startling pace.

COVID vaccine passports are becoming the “show me your papers” that once was a joking statement by the comedian Artie Johnson on the TV show Laugh-In. It is no longer a laughing matter for those who cherish the liberty the founding fathers gave us constitutionally—the freedom they said, correctly, was God-given.

Ensconced firmly within the plan for the Great Reset are the reprobate dictates meant to destroy any semblance of normality and morality. It is all straight from the mind of Lucifer, who hates mankind.

A recent item prominent in one the few sources of news that aren’t compromised by the media minions starkly tells of the evil being foisted on those of us who hold to God’s view of morality.

A father is claiming the Loudoun County school district attempted to cover up his daughter’s alleged assault in the girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School by a boy wearing a skirt.

Scott Smith was arrested in June at a school in Loudoun County, Virginia, during a board meeting at which hundreds of parents voiced concerns about the district’s transgender policy and Critical Race Theory (CRT)….

Just prior to Smith’s arrest at the meeting, the Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent told attendees opposed to the transgender bathroom policy their concerns were unfounded since the school district had no record of any assaults in school bathrooms, the Daily Wire reported.

An LGBTQ activist at the meeting reportedly told Smith his daughter’s claim of assault was not believable because there were no records of such assaults.

Smith said, with that statement, he “went nuts” and insulted the principal, and was subsequently arrested. (“Father: Loudoun County Schools Hid Daughter’s Bathroom Assault by Boy Wearing Skirt,” Elaine Thompson/Associated Press, Breitbart News [@BreitbartNews])

The assault charges against the alleged attacker are so salacious, I won’t include them. The high school male student claiming to be transgender was moved to another school rather than being incarcerated, as I understand it for now. He, it was reported, went on to sexually assault another student at the new school.

The insanity that is within Satan’s plan to corrupt and destroy God’s creation is seen in microcosm in this story. The boy allegedly committing the horrendous crime was protected. The father of the daughter who was the victim was arrested for protesting the atrocity. This proves the point I like to make—that this generation is at the point Paul forewarned of in Romans 1: 28:

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.

While the principalities and powers of Ephesians 6:12 continue at a frenzied pace to implement their master’s plan, we can be assured that God’s plan, not the devil’s, will prevail.

And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. (Revelation 21:5–8)

Saturdays are no longer my favorites like they were when I worked full time in my jobs in advertising and public relations. Back then, I welcomed the relaxation that came with the day immediately following hectic weeks of meetings with clients and concocting and conducting campaigns for corporations to get products and services in front of the public.

Nowadays, Saturdays bore me, because I like to start my days early by listening to TV programs while sipping coffee. The programs are mostly preacher boys (as they’re sometimes called here in the south) such as Dr. David Jeremiah, Dr. Robert Jeffress, Les Feldick, and others who present daily programs. These regularly scheduled programs aren’t on my satellite system on Saturdays. My routine is disrupted.

However, a past Saturday, I was pleasantly surprised while clicking through the channels when I heard a program that was presenting a documentary that piqued my interest. It was on Daystar Television, and it featured of a number of men and a couple of women talking about how true Bible prophecy is a dwindling topic in most all churches in America.

I suspected who a couple of the men were, but never knew for sure, because, of course, I’m now blind. I started watching somewhere in the middle of the documentary, so didn’t have a frame of reference for those speaking in brief clips.

I did think I recognized my dear friend Jan Markell—she will have to let me know—but she was the only one who sounded familiar.

Those who addressed the matters involved were true Bible teachers, to be sure. They outlined precisely how the churches in America today are avoiding talk of prophecy and of Christ’s return. Pastors, they correctly surmised, are most afraid that talk of the Rapture of the Church and of Christ’s return and other prophetic topics will somehow interfere with “growing their churches.”

How sad but true their collective assessments were. The closer the time comes for Jesus to return to earth and correct this horrendous mess Satan and his minions have made of the planet, the less preachers want to preach it, and the more many in the pews prefer not to hear about it.

I thought while listening: How true it is, the forewarning of Jesus Himself when He asked whether He would find faith on the earth when He comes back.

Those being interviewed in the documentary went into depth about how those with the Holy Spirit were the people mentioned in the parable of the ten virgins. How those who have the Holy Spirit within will go into the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Those without the “oil for their lamps” (the Holy Spirit) won’t be part of that glorious event. They spoke of how there was great resistance not only to talk of the Rapture, but to the belief that the Holy Spirit even, in fact, exists.

It is abundantly clear that those who don’t even believe the Holy Spirit exists lead the way in the “Rapture resistance” that is the title of this commentary. A study looks more deeply into this tragic, downward spiral in Christendom.

Of an estimated 176 million American adults who identify as Christian, just 6% or 15 million of them actually hold a biblical worldview, a new study from Arizona Christian University shows.

The finding was published by the Cultural Research Center of Arizona Christian University in its recently released American Worldview Inventory, an annual survey that evaluates the worldview of the U.S. adult population. Conducted in February, the survey included a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults.

The study shows, in general, that while a majority of America’s self-identified Christians, including many who identify as evangelical, believe that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and is the Creator of the universe, more than half reject a number of biblical teachings and principles, including the existence of the Holy Spirit.

Strong majorities also errantly believe that all religious faiths are of equal value, people are basically good and that people can use acts of goodness to earn their way into Heaven. The study further showed that majorities don’t believe in moral absolutes; consider feelings, experience, or the input of friends and family as their most trusted sources of moral guidance; and say that having faith matters more than which faith you pursue. (“Most adult U.S. Christians don’t believe Holy Spirit is real: Study,” by Leonardo Blair, Christian Post Reporter, Christian Post, October 1, 2021)

How accurate this polling research is, I don’t know. But certainly all one has to do is to mention the Rapture to most who claim to be Christians and there is either silence or statements like “I don’t like to think about prophecy. It scares me.”

It apparently scares most pastors, too, but for a different reason—the one mentioned earlier.

To eliminate the Holy Spirit is to eliminate the “hope” that is within the “blessed hope” of Titus 2: 13.

Jesus told the disciples—and us down through the centuries—that if He went away, He would send the “comforter”—the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit (the Third Person of the Triune Godhead) came at Pentecost (see Acts chapter 2) to indwell and comfort believers until Jesus returns bodily to set up His Millennial Kingdom.

The Holy Spirit is the Restrainer (see 2 Thessalonians chapter 2). He holds back full-blown wickedness at this very moment. The Holy Spirit will remove from that office of Restrainer when we who are true believers are taken instantly to be with Christ.

Here is what Jesus said about that moment. And, despite what a number of seminary professors say, it is a Rapture passage—a mystery that the great Apostle Paul would later reveal in His epistles to the Corinthians and Thessalonians.

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (John 14:1–3)

Most people who profess Christianity as their faith base claim to cling to Bible truth. However, it is my observation that the overwhelming majority within these numbers shows little or no understanding of or interest in the signals of the lateness of the times in terms of Bible prophecy.

This dearth of understanding and even of interest stems, no doubt, from churches and their pastors and teachers having little understanding or even interest. People in the pews, in listening to weekly sermons or Sunday school lessons, it is sad to say, are for the most part satisfied with messages that give them comfort—that make them rest easy from the week’s life problems.

While this wanting to forget one’s problems is understandable, it is not altogether what the Lord wants for His children. As a matter of fact, God’s Word warns about these very days and the dangers posed through the following words of the Apostle Paul:

I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. (2 Timothy 4:1–4)  

We have witnessed over the years many such “turning to fables” because of “strange winds of doctrine” taught by “teachers” to many with “itching ears.” This includes those “teachers” who have predicted the exact date of the Rapture of the Church.

Paul warned Timothy—and all future preachers, teachers, and people in the seats of learning in the church—to be faithful to teaching and heeding biblical truth, to avoid “vain-jangling” (speaking or listening to nonsense). Paul said further, regarding his own faithfulness by example, as recorded just a couple of verses later:

Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:8)

And the last words recorded here are key to this commentary. The great apostle addresses this to all who “love his appearing.” The “his” here is the Lord Jesus Christ, of course. Paul addresses God’s blessings of a crown of righteousness for all “who love his appearing”—the prophesied Second Coming of Christ.

Those who listen and heed Bible prophecy, and who “love his appearing” (are looking for the Rapture—or for His Second Advent if a Tribulation saint) will receive this special crown. Crowns are above and beyond heavenly rewards, as I understand the terms. This “crown” will be one that those who receive it will cast at the Lord’s feet, as praise to the King of all kings. Jesus will be wearing these crowns of praise when He rides the heavenly steed of glistening white during His return as given in Revelation 19:11.

We go deeper into this and what it means in the following brief, but marvelous, Scripture. It is one we often quote.

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. (Titus 2:13)

We who claim the holy name of Jesus Christ are to be “looking for the blessed hope.” If we earnestly do so, we will avoid the “vain-jangling” and the false teachings of false doctrine.

While false doctrinal teachings are important to avoid—and this is the main kind of falseness Christians are to avoid—there is another sort that the believer must discern and counter.

I read and listen to so many pundits and writers these days who foretell the direst circumstances imaginable for the nation and world. The troubling thing is that these fear-forecasters are at least partially right in their prognostication of evil and destruction among us now and of things to come.

One such blogcaster tells us that a large portion of the world’s populations will be killed soon through the manipulations of the globalists. The would-be world rulers, he is convinced, are using the vaccine-mandate madness to inject “killer shots” in order to bring down populations to the 500 million-people population as written on the Georgia Guidestones monument.

The communist Chinese, we are told, are about to invade the US, after major cyber and even possible nuclear attacks upon military bases within America.

COVID death camps are scattered across the country and will be used to take all who aren’t vaccinated there to be killed as were Jews and other “undesirables” in the death camps of Hitler’s time.

This blogcaster—who is a very intelligent fellow—believes this with all that is within him, I can tell.

He gives the impression that he believes in God and that God is on our side and we will win (as the human race) against the evil about to assault us.

I must say that if he is a true believer, he is one who is listening to false teachers, both in his time under church leaders and in his time putting together his so-called “intelligence” from wherever he gets his information.

The “intelligence” he and others like him are receiving tells only the half-truth of what is to come. The real truth is found in God’s Word, the Bible.

Paul the apostle said all believers are to look for “the blessed hope”—not for a total world dictatorship–Antichrist.

These evil things are about to happen, to be sure, but not for the Christian.

Where is “the blessed hope” in any of the dire predictions?

We are promised “the blessed hope.” We are told by Jesus Himself, as reported by John the Revelator, to be kept out of even the hour of “temptation”—the Tribulation (Revelation 3:10).

Our Blessed Hope is about to break through the clouds of glory and call God’s children to be with Him forever.

Amen! Even so come, Lord Jesus!

Of all the prophets in God’s Holy Word, to me there are two prophets that stand out as specifically speaking to these times so near the end of the Church Age (Age of Grace).

Paul speaks to the characteristics of end-times mankind through the “perilous times” descriptions in 2 Timothy 3.

We’ve gone over those characteristics many times. People will, Paul foretold, be exactly like they are today—always trending toward ungodliness. Two specific characteristics I’ve probably dissected most are “lovers of self” and “without natural affection.” In the first case, we’ve looked at the Internet, social media, personal devices, and all that points men and women, boys and girls, inward. This takes them away from thinking about God and what life is all about from Heaven’s perspective. The term “selfies” is, to me, the epitome of this inward-turning. It isn’t much of a stretch to understand how destructive this has become to society and culture in America—to the very governing documents the founding fathers gave us—under God’s guidance, I believe.

In the second case, we’ve examined the evil of shedding the blood of the innocents—one of the seven things God says He hates.

Abortion, the murder of babies in their mother’s wombs, is about the most abominable activity we who love the Lord can imagine. Yet society, as a whole, grasps onto this infanticide as a right granted people—most often used to get rid of unwanted baggage that might interfere with the lives of those who want no sexual inhibitions placed upon them by any authority—especially not by any Deity and His Bible.

Also, “without natural affection” means, in my view, the homosexual madness that prevails in this nation. Even psychologists and many within so-called clergy now embrace LGBTQ, etc., as a natural, not “unnatural” comportment.

In my view, the other prophet that is most relevant to our exact time so near Christ’s return is the prophet Daniel.

Whereas Paul spoke for the most part particularly to how things will be in society and culture as the end of the age approaches, Daniel spoke to how things will be in terms of developments in the governments of mankind.

The prophet, we remember, went before King Nebuchadnezzar to interpret his strange dream that none of the soothsayers could even describe, much less interpret, to the worried king. Daniel did this in great detail, laying out the precise order of kingdoms that would develop right up until the time Christ returns to destroy the wickedness of man-made governmental structure. He told how the entire system—the evil, Babylonian system—would meet its end.

Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. (Daniel 2:31–35)

The gigantic man-image represented the kingdoms that would come and go. Daniel described how a final world kingdom, represented by the feet and toes of the image, would come into being at the very last of human history. He said a massive stone would fall on the image, strike the feet and toes, and topple the whole monstrous structure. The stone would then crush it to powder and the winds of history would blow it all away as dust, completely and forever destroying all vestiges of human government.

Jesus Christ, of course, is that “stone.” He is the rock the Lord described to Peter in commending Peter for recognizing that He, Jesus, is the “rock” upon which His (Jesus’) Church would be built (Matthew 16:18).

So, considering Paul’s prophecies, we have concluded on a number of occasions that they fit our times perfectly. So we now look briefly at how Daniel’s prophecy here fits our time at this late date on God’s prophetic timeline.

The ten toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream-vision represent ten kings and kingdoms yet to be formed at the very end of the age just before Christ’s return. Many prophecy scholars and others have thought this might be a certain configuration of nation-states strictly out of Europe—thus representing the revived Roman Empire.

We now, with all the things that have been developing, can legitimately conjecture whether there is much more involved than merely positioning only Europe in that long-ago prophecy.

The all-consuming dictatorship of the coming Antichrist seems to congeal each day as we get reports of developments. The so-called Deep-State gyrations of wickedness, combined with other dynamics taking place across the world, makes us believe there is much, much more than surmised in our previously thought approach to this great, end-times prophecy by Daniel.

A most recent development in that regard is seen in the following.

In recent years, calls for more coordinated action in the face of China’s increasingly assertive foreign policy have reached something of a crescendo.

It is now not uncommon to hear diplomats and foreign ministers from Brussels to Tokyo asserting that unilateral responses to Beijing’s ever more muscular approach to international affairs are just not enough, and that what is needed now is a more harmonized international response. As the European Union’s top diplomat put it in 2020, in the face of China’s “more assertive – some even say aggressive” behavior, it is “important to have strong cooperation with like-minded democracies. The EU and U.S. should be at the heart of this effort, but we should also be working closely with Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and others.”

While specific proposals to achieve this enhanced cooperation are few and far between, there is one idea that seems to be gaining some traction. That is British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s idea that the existing G7 might be transformed into a grouping of the world’s “like-minded democracies” for the purpose of checking China’s more assertive behavior.

The existing G7, of course, is an informal bloc of the seven most advanced industrialized countries. It was created in 1975 to allow its leaders to discuss and exchange ideas on a broad range of issues, including the global economy, security and energy…

The proposed renovation – first floated by the Atlantic Council back in 2008, and likely to be proposed in earnest by Johnson at this year’s G7 summit in June – would involve an expansion of the group’s membership and a refocusing of its efforts. The resulting institution, tentatively dubbed the D-10, would not be an alliance like NATO. Nor would it even be an informal strategic forum like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad, a loose coalition involving Japan, Australia, India and the U.S. Rather, as currently envisioned, the D10 would essentially be an informal mechanism for the world’s 10 most important democracies – the G7 states plus India, Japan and South Korea – to cooperatively manage the rules-based international order and to address some of the challenges to that order posed by today’s China. (“The G7 and NATO won’t cut it: Why a new alliance is needed,” Andrew Latham, www.msn.com,, 4/12/21)

The feet and toes of iron mixed with miry clay could be viewed as forming in order to build Antichrist’s final world empire this side of the Second Advent. That governmental structure—whatever its constituency—will be wicked beyond anything mankind has experienced. Forced vaccines and all other overreaches will seem as nothing when the “man of sin” takes over the reins of the final form of the Babylonian system.

Jesus will be that “stone” that will bring that thoroughly beastly rulership down in thunderous collapse.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Some have mockingly termed it “the nanny state.” The nanny state is, according to Wikipedia, a term of British origin that conveys a view that a government or its policies are overprotective or interfering unduly with personal choice. The term likens such a government to the role that a nanny has in child-rearing. An early use of the term comes from Conservative British Member of Parliament Iain Macleod, who referred to “what I like to call the nanny state” in the 3 December 1965 edition of The Spectator.

Harsher terminology for this kind of governance is authoritarian rule or even dictatorship. It is the kind of governmental evil that George Orwell wrote about in his novel 1984, and that Aldous Huxley framed in his fiction work, Brave New World.

However one wants to define it, the Biden government, with the current occupant in the White House laying out the vaccine mandates and other demands that we comply, has made major strides toward installing the sort of government forewarned by both Orwell and Huxley.

I heard a podcast host who has a considerable listenership/viewership asking the question: How have we (the US) come to this point? That is, how have we come from being a representative democracy that was the envy of the world to a nation that now is on the verge of becoming a “risk society.”?

The term was totally new to me. I see America as moving swiftly toward becoming a godless, therefore a reprobate, country, according to the first chapter of Romans (verse 28). But a blog analyst who analyzes America’s declining trajectory from a secular viewpoint uses the term “risk society” in defining the extent to which the nation has devolved.

I have followed Dr. Steve Turley’s podcasts for quite some time and have found his analytical opinion videos to be enlightening and soundly based. So when I heard him asking the question of how we as a nation got to where we are now from the way we were in saner times, calling America now a “risk society,” my curiosity was piqued.

Turley, a college professor, began by saying he was getting questions in his blog-type seminars about why the United States seemed to be turning into a communist state—why America is, day by day, moving toward Marxist-socialism.

He said: “There is, in fact, discernable rationale for how we ended up here. And it’s rooted in what is called a ‘risk society’.”

He then said that a risk society is the way modern globalist societies deal with risk. Expounding upon this, he said it means the way societies deal with insecurities related to potential hazards we might face.

Turley said that every human generation has had to face insecurities and hazards. Traveling from one city to another, for example, presented hazards to eighteenth-century Americans. He said the phrase “Goodbye” (I take it, during that era) was born out of an expression related to dependence upon the higher, heavenly Authority for safety. “Goodbye” is actually the contraction of “The Great God be with thee”.

The professor then made the point that people no longer, as a generational whole, depend upon a personal, religious belief system in keeping them safe from the risks they face each and every day. By this, the takeaway is that people are turning from God and turning instead to something else in which to place their faith.

I couldn’t agree more with this assessment. Just as Turley says, people now look toward government to protect them from the risks they face. Thus, this generation moves farther and farther from the God of Heaven.

One glaring example of this is how the COVID-19 matter has been handled. At least half of America’s population relies on government to be their protector in the matter. There have been much worse epidemics, but never has the population fallen in such a massive way for governmental overreach in forcing compliance to take inadequately tested injections. Freedom is thus eroded; the liberty the founding fathers intended, I believe, has been maliciously attacked in ways yet to be fully manifested.

This is a risk society that has, in many ways, made big government its god. From the invasion and takeover of the public education system; removing prayer and Bible reading from public schools; and constitutionally mandating murder of babies in the womb and even the just-born to inculcating the young with the anti-American rewriting of history; teaching them unnatural, antibiblical ways of sensuality and sexuality; and the insane, upside-down, cancel-culture evil—the risk society wages war against Christianity—against God.

Steve Turley further proposed that such a risk society—one that no longer relies on religious faith whatsoever—turns to advancing technology to mitigate risk. Technological protection requires technocrats—those with knowledge of the technology—to assure the risk is diminished and/or eradicated. This, of course, seems to be the way things are trending toward the establishment of Revelation 13:16–18—the mark of the Beast and all that pertains to it.

There are additional and profound prophetic implications, too, in this matter of a risk society. They are found in the Apostle Paul’s writing.

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. (2 Thessalonians 5:1–3)

Paul prophesies that at the end of the Church Age (Age of Grace) when the “day of the Lord” comes, there will be a great cry for “peace and safety.”

This is the “risk society.” There is a great angst among people all over the world for safety against the so-called pandemic. Never before has there been such a worldwide begging for safety. Such a cry could have never happened until the developments in global technologies and technocratic rule of the globalists who, with the principalities and powers of Ephesians 6:12, instituted the implementation of plans to fulfill the satanic blueprint that will eventuate in the buying and selling dictatorship of Revelation 13:16–18.

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. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. (Revelation 13: 16–18)

It takes neither a scholar in Bible prophecy nor a scholar of Middle Eastern history to understand that dynamics in the region are building toward war. Those who would be governors of world geopolitics, such as the elite of the UN, fear the region to be the ignition point for a future conflict that will explode into full-blown nuclear conflagration.

We know from God’s prophetic Word that Israel is destined both to suffer a time of great trouble and, ultimately, a thousand years of glory as the head of all nations. This turmoil and eventual emergence into great victory involves threats and pressures from surrounding nations that hate that Jewish state.

While Bible prophecy outlines and even details to some extent how all of this eventuates, the moment-by-moment, day-by-day developments are not always clear in regard to how all will unfold. Those pressures mentioned take the form of many points of shaping and influencing God’s chosen as the nation interacts among nation-states of the region and world.

I’m of the opinion that one such point of pressure is being used at present by the old serpent Satan to cause God’s chosen people to be seen as a prototype for how he intends to manipulate and control the world’s population when allowed to foment his final moments of evil.

We’ve looked a number of times in these commentaries at how COVID-19 has been wielded as a powerful tool with which to bludgeon the entire populations of the planet into submission. To any observer of Bible prophecy from the pre-Trib view, this globalist-generated biological weapon was planned and is being used to establish a worldwide mindset of being willing to submit to authoritarian rule.

In this sense, Israel is, I believe, being somehow prepped to serve Satan’s purpose for the coming Tribulation holocaust.

We see story after story of COVID-19 used to lock down cities and now entire nations. Australia, for example, has become almost again the prison colony it once was. The rulers in some parts—South Wales, for example—have become despotic in their evil demands. First they seized all private weapons they could force the Aussies to give up, and now they go house to house to demand vaccine proof. Those not compliant go to something called “wellness camps” or some such designation.

But, regardless from where the stories of lockdowns, etc., come, it is more and more the tiny Jewish state that is being put in the world spotlight—all with the willing complicity of Israel’s own growingly despotic leadership. The nation leads the world in people vaccinated to protect against COVID apparently, yet incongruent facts have emerged. The following report/analysis frames developments.

Just a few months ago, the mainstream media praised Israel for its “pandemic-ending” vaccination campaign. With over 40 percent of the population “fully vaccinated” in the first quarter of 2021, Israel was well on its way to stopping community spread and clearing out its hospitals.

The nation of Israel imposed some of the strictest lockdowns during that time, violating the Nuremberg Code and segregating the unvaccinated from public life. Israel bought up the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA Covid vaccine and began issuing mandatory Green Pass “vaccine passports” as a requirement for citizens to enter public spaces. By August, Israel had intimidated and coerced its population into having one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with 78 percent of people 12 years of age and older classified as “fully vaccinated.”

The world was reassured that this rate of vaccination was more than enough to ensure individual and “herd immunity.” However, infection rates have skyrocketed across the country since then, and Israel is now logging the world’s highest infection rates, with nearly 650 new cases daily per million people. At times, hospitalizations for the “fully vaccinated” have reached upwards of 95 percent. (Lance D. Johnson, “Israel now has more covid infections per capita than any country in the world, even as “booster shots” are being widely administered there,” CitizenFreePress, Thursday, September 02, 2021)

The nation is now again under draconian lockdown.

A friend emailed me this week and posed a fascinating question. He pondered whether Israel is in probably the most dictatorial-type lockdown of any nation on earth, keeping its citizens from leaving en masse for some divine purpose.

Perhaps, he conjectured, it is because some action by the Lord or by some evil entity is pending. The severe sequestration keeping Israeli citizens more or less in lockdown is maybe to protect or benefit them in some way from imminent something or the other.

We know the following is always true, no matter what the facts are surrounding that which seems to be prepping Israel for what is to come.

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. (Psalm 121: 4)