Like in the story Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum, when slave Pseudolus runs into all sorts of side-tracking interferences as he tries to win his freedom from Roman slavery, something funny has happened to Satan’s plans to enslave the world on the way to the consummation of the age.

Not only did a major actor in Satan’s script that was meant to pervert history slip from his genocidal grip, but that script has become totally convoluted. I’m referring here to Israel–the nation and the chosen people—the destruction of whom Satan’s minions, the Nazis, and their Fuhrer, failed to complete in implementing the Final Solution.

Like the creators of Something Funny… I use the term “funny” in an oblique definition—to say that an odd thing has happened to the devil’s plan to completely eradicate the Jews of the world.

Not only did Hitler fail to complete his satanically assigned task to forever destroy the Jewish people through the Holocaust, but he unwittingly accomplished the following:

• Hitler and his Third Reich brought on God’s Genesis 12 curse, and they were themselves completely destroyed.
• Hitler’s actions brought about the rebirth of Israel in a single day, fulfilling prophecy.
• The Fuhrer’s vaunted Luftwaffe, which terrorized all of Europe, now has become an ally of the military of God’s chosen nation.

The following news excerpt frames the story.

Germany welcomed military aircraft from Israel to its airspace on Thursday in their first joint combat exercises in German territory as both air forces praised the intensive cooperation between the two countries.

“It was very emotional for us when, one after the other, the first Israeli jets arrived here in German airspace,” a spokesman for the German Luftwaffe told the German news agency DPA

“Nowadays, we have a very intense partnership with the Israelis,” spokesman Thorsten Weber said. “We work closely together, we do exercises together, German soldiers are being trained in Israel.”…

During the Third Reich, Nazi Germany murdered 6 million European Jews and others in the Holocaust. Relations between Israel and Germany were difficult in the first decades after the end of the war, but have been growing closer together over the years…

Nowadays, Germany is one of Israel’s staunchest supporters. (“Germany Welcomes Israeli Air Force for First Joint Exercise,” AP, August 20, 2020)

It seems a strange, convoluted, turn of events to be sure. Thinking on the death camps and the horrors of the crematoria across parts of Nazi-occupied Europe, it hardly seems that enough time has elapsed to allow such an alliance.

But in strange times we are. Bible prophecy foretells that an even more horrific time is coming for Israel than it suffered in time of WW II. There is a holocaust that awaits fulfillment, regardless of the present-day alliance between the Jewish state and the nation that perpetrated unspeakable atrocities three quarters of a century ago.

The prophetic Word tells that the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30:7) is yet to produce another effort at Satan’s Final Solution. It will take place during Daniel’s seventieth week, the last seven years known as the Tribulation. Jesus said that it will be the worst time in human history (Matthew 24: 21).

Most of this generation has forgotten Hitler’s all-out assault against the Jews–the matter he called “the Jewish problem.” Even many Jews in America and around the world seem to have forgotten—despite their progenitors who lived through the horror and who declared “never again!”

But it will happen again, and it will be exponentially worse, according to Christ’s own forewarning.

Because so many know little to nothing about that time of World War II or of that time Jesus said will be the worst time of evil ever upon the earth, we decided to produce a book dedicated to explaining all involved in Hitler’s first genocidal “Final Solution” and of Antichrist’s even more horrific “Final Solution” that is soon to come.

Dr. Thomas Horn contacted me several months ago, and we discussed just how crucial it is that this truth about Satan’s murderous plans for the Jews and all of humanity be brought to this unknowing generation. The results are our book, just released.

ANTICHRIST and The Final Solution is the result of intensive research that thoroughly covers every important detail, from Hitler’s first attempt at the Final Solution to Antichrist’s terrible attempt at completing Satan’s hellish assault on humanity.

We carry through in a detailed and easy-to-follow unfolding of prophecy what will happen next as history moves forward toward Christ’s Second Advent, the Millennium, and the remaking of the heavens and the earth.

We believe this explanation of things soon to come should be in the hands of every member of the younger generation, many of whom have little or no idea of why things are getting more chaotic and where it’s all going. Tom and I hope that many, upon reading this book, will be convicted that only Jesus Christ truly has the “Final Solution that can bring peace and salvation to the people of this sin-doomed world system.

To read more about the book and watch a program of our discussion of these matters, go to the following.

“Antichrist and The Final Solution”

Authors note: This article was first posted a number of years ago. The Bible Truth here was never more relevant than right this moment. Thus it is timely as a reminder of just how near must be the great event called the Rapture.

No scriptural proof-text in God’s Word more clearly points to the first of the two phases of Jesus Christ’s second coming than does the following: “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5:2).

We who hold to the pre-trib rapture viewpoint are often accused of being deceivers. We are condemned by our detractors as leading astray Christians alive now –if they live to see it–  who will be required to endure the tribulation, thus to wash their robes clean in preparation for inheriting God’s Kingdom.

We are castigated for foisting upon innocent, gullible believers a “secret rapture” that will somehow lead these Christians to take the mark of the beast(Rev. 13:16-18).

I’m not precisely sure of their “reasoning,” but I think they claim this because they are convinced that the ones who fall for the rapture viewpoint won’t be able to recognize Antichrist when he comes to power. We who teach the pre-trib rapture, so the accusation goes, would have falsely led these people to think the Church would not be here when Antichrist is on the world scene.

Almost all who are antagonistic to the pre-trib rapture doctrine teach that the “elect” will have to endure part or all of the seven-year tribulation era.

Those who hold to a post-tribulation rapture, or a no-rapture position, believe that Christ will come back at the end of the tribulation, at Armageddon.

They hold to the notion that that is His only return in the second coming. There are other views of the second coming that have Christ returning when the earth is perfected and made ready, but we won’t go there in this essay.

Let us look at only the pre-trib rapture and the post-trib rapture positions for the purpose of exploring what is meant by the “thief in the night” references in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 and 2 Peter 3:10.

These two viewpoints–the pre-trib, and the post-trib–offer the greatest contrast to examine in consideration of the second advent of Jesus Christ, within the overall belief that rapture will, according to Bible prophecy, happen before Christ’s foot actually touches down on Planet Earth.

The pre-trib view of rapture says that Christ’s second coming is in two phases, separated by at least seven years. The post-trib rapture view says that the rapture and Christ’s coming back to the Mount of Olives will occur almost simultaneously–certainly with no more than a matter of days separating the two events. The post-trib position says there is no “secret” rapture. Christ’s coming again will be fully seen in the heavens by all, including Christians who will be watching for Him to break through the darkness of that hour.

We agree that the rapture of the Church (all born-again believers in Jesus Christ for salvation since the Church Age began at Pentecost) will be anything but a “secret”. The world will instantly go into cataclysmic chaos at the moment that stunning event takes place. The imagination is hard-pressed to fathom the ramifications of what will happen when millions suddenly vanish. Every child below the age of accountability will be gone in that mind-boggling instant of time. I am convinced that all babies (including those in the wombs of their mothers) will be instantly in the presence of Christ in the clouds of glory. Every corpse of every dead Christian will be raised to join with his or her soul to meet Christ in the air in that atomos of time.

The rapture will be mystifying, and to some an inexplicable phenomenon, but it will not be a secret. It will happen before the eyes of a stupefied planet of left-behind earth-dwellers. This declaration that Jesus will call His Church to be with Him seems audacious to many. But, it didn’t seem so to the Apostle Paul. He was quite confident–even adamant—in his prophecy concerning the “mystery” he had been given by the Holy Spirit to instruct all believers down through the Age of Grace (Church Age).

“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51-52).

He explains what will take place next, in that stupendous fraction of a second: “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:15-17).

Jesus himself told of this “mystery” Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15:51. The Lord explains what happens after believers –both the bodies of the dead and those who are living– are caught up in the air to be with Him: “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” (Jn. 14:1-3).

So, the rapture will take place. Believers and the bodies of those who died during the Church Age will be “caught up” in one single moment of time. “ALL,” not “some,” will go instantly to be with Jesus, who will then take them into heaven, where He has been preparing their dwelling places since He ascended from the Mount of Olives.

Again, the pre-trib position on this joyous event is that it is imminent (could happen at any moment), and will happen before the tribulation period begins.

The post-trib position says that it happens at the end of the most terrible time in human history, just as Jesus Christ is returning from heaven at Armageddon.

The pre-trib view holds that it will occur at an unknown time. It will be a stunning, sudden, and unannounced-to-the-world-at-large break-in upon business as usual on Planet Earth. The post-trib proclaims that it will occur following all of the horrors of the judgments outlined in Revelation.

The pre-trib view says that the world at large (left-behind earth-dwellers) won’t see it coming. The rapture will cause all left on earth to wonder what has happened. The post-trib view says that all eyes will behold Christ’s coming again to a hellish planet, and the living and dead saints will then be gathered to Christ.

The defining thing to consider in thinking on the two diametrically different views of the rapture and second coming is wrapped up in the term “thief in the night”. The Apostle Peter again uses this mysterious term, first used by Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:2: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Pet. 3:10).

Peter is saying here that the day of the Lord–that time when God and His Christ, His Son, takes over this fallen planet—will begin like a thief in the night.

It will be a sudden, catastrophic break-in upon a world doing business as usual. (Read Luke 17:26-29 to understand how things will be going along as usual when Christ comes back.)

This description hardly fits the post-trib view, or any other view that says Christ will rapture His Church during a time of unprecedented trouble (Jer. 30:7; Matt. 24:21). This indicates that it will be a total surprise, because a thief in the night doesn’t announce his coming with great, cataclysmic fanfare.

The break-in is swift, stealthy–a totally unexpected event.

Peter foretells in these passages that the “day of the Lord” will then run its course, until the remaking of the heavens and the earth. The rapture will begin this “day of the Lord,” which will then run at least 1,007 years.

This is the first phase of Christ’s second coming. The rapture occurs like a “thief in the night”. The second advent, when Jesus’ foot touches down on the Mount of Olives, is the second phase of His second coming.

There are those who say with vehemence that it is blasphemous to equate Christ’s coming again as being like the break-in of a thief in the night. How dare we liken their Lord to a “thief”!

Really? Here’s what Jesus, the Creator of all things, said about this matter: “But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:43-44).

Looks like a pretty good case for the Lord’s sudden intervention into the nefarious affairs of this increasingly wicked world, does it not? That thief-in-the-night moment could happen, literally, at any moment. Certainly, signals of the tribulation are beginning to come to pass.

“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (Lk. 21:28).

One major signal just leaped to the top of God’s prophetic timeline. Israel and her traditional enemies, the Arabs, have agreed to full normalization of relations.

While the agreement, to be soon formalized at a White House signing, isn’t an agreement of peace in terms of a full peace treaty between Israel and all its Arab neighbors, it is the first time in twenty-five years that such an agreement has been reached. The first was between Israel and Egypt, when Jimmy Carter, Israel Prime Minister Menachem Began, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat came together in 1978. The second was in 1994 when Israel and Jordan signed a similar agreement. Both treaties have held relatively firm since their signings.

This agreement is between the UAE (United Arab Emirates)—a Gulf state—and Israel. Israel agreed to suspend its planned extension of sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria to facilitate relations with the UAE and potentially other Arab and Muslim countries. The action has, as might be expected, brought praise and condemnation from various parties involved in international relations.

Among prophecy watchers, it has stirred much punditry, as does any activity involving Israel and the peace process. The big question some are asking: Is this peace signing the one that will eventually bring about the covenant made with death and hell as foretold in Daniel 9:26–27 and Isaiah 28:15, 18?

According to the Jerusalem Post:

The agreement will include establishing embassies and exchanging ambassadors, investments into the Israeli economy, trade, direct flights between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi, an investment in Israeli efforts to develop a corona virus vaccine – as first reported in The Jerusalem Post last month – and cooperation in matters of energy and water. An important element of the deal for the UAE is the expectation that its citizens would be able to visit the Al-Aksa mosque in Jerusalem. (Lahav Harkov, “Third-ever Peace Treaty between Israel and an Arab State Includes Embassies, Direct Flights; Agreement “Suspends” Annexation, but Netanyahu Says: ‘I will never give up on our right to our land,’” Jerusalem Post, Omri Nahmias, 8/14/2020)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the deal “full, formal peace” with “one of the strongest countries in the world.”

“Together we can bring a wonderful future. It is an incomparably exciting moment,” he said. “I have the great privilege to make the third peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country, the UAE.”

In a post to his Twitter account, President Donald Trump said: “Opening direct ties between two of the Middle East’s most dynamic societies and advanced economies will transform the region by spurring economic growth, enhancing technological innovation, and forging closer people-to-people relations.”

Speaking further in the Oval Office, Trump indicated he anticipated “many more countries” in the region normalizing ties with Israel and “some very exciting things including, ultimately, with the Palestinians.”

The Israeli prime minister said he has “reason to be very optimistic that the announcement with the UAE will be joined by more countries in this expanding circle of peace.”

Palestinian leadership and Iranian leadership are among those not happy with the peace-making effort. But others of the Arab world believe it to be in their best interest to see stability in the region that such an arrangement will bring.

Most Arab leaders who see the advantages are pleased that Israel has put on hold the annexation of much of the Jordanian territory they had been seeking to implement.  Netanyahu made it plain that the agreement in no way is giving up Israel land for a peace arrangement. In this regard, making the agreement, which includes no giving up of Israeli territory, breaks tradition of other efforts at peace, in which the Jewish state had to agree to give away parcels of land to get Arab agreement.

The agreement “ushers in a new era of peace between Israel and the Arab world,” Netanyahu said.

Many Bible prophecy students who observe developments see this as a major event in bringing about the wrap-up of the age. Considering all the other issues and events that seem to be converging at such a torrid pace, it is more than understandable that Israel making such an agreement brings sharp observation and commentary.

One such pundit believes that French President Emmanuel Macron is the number-one candidate to be Antichrist. According to many, Macron exhibits many of the characteristics of that future man of sin.

Macron immediately asserted his strong support and intention to get involved in the new peace agreement in several statements. The French president’s comments brought some strong opinions including from the aforementioned writer, who writes the following:

Emmanuel Macron has now officially inserted himself into not only the Middle East on multiple levels, he has also just given himself a seat in the “Abraham Accord” announced by President Trump and Jared Kushner yesterday…

This is the beginning of the Daniel 9:27 covenant with “death and Hell.” This is it, and Emmanuel Macron is the man of sin.

While I’m not prepared to make bold declarations such as naming Antichrist, nor even to declare this to be the beginning of that apocalyptic false peace, I can certainly join in the exuberance in pointing to where this generation almost certainly stands on God’s prophetic timeline.

On August 16, 2020, Daymond Duck’s beloved wife for nearly thirty-four years, Rachel Marie Powers Duck, went to Heaven.

The daughter of Tavy and Willie Powers, Rachel was the seventh of ten children, three of whom became Baptist pastors like their father, Tavy, a pastor and a farmer.

Rachel, valedictorian of her high school graduation class, earned a scholarship to Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, where she studied to be a registered nurse.

She loved Jesus and was an outstanding wife, mother, church member, and more. All who knew her recognized her as one of the most selfless, beautiful, honest, compassionate human beings to ever grace this planet. She took an interest in all people, caring for them and loving everyone she encountered unconditionally.

Rachel was the ideal pastor’s wife to Daymond, who served in ministry until he retired in 2006. She urged her husband to write his first book, she served and taught in the churches he pastored, went with him everywhere he went, and took two grandchildren with her to church every Sunday. It was like Daymond and Rachel were joined at the hip. (If you saw Daymond, you were sure to see Rachel as well.)

An avid Bible student, Rachel studied her Bible constantly, with her number-one priority in life being to learn as much as she could from the Lord and to serve Him both in her church and community.

At church, she taught Sunday school for most of her life; led numerous Bible studies; worked with children on Bible drills; served in the nursery; was involved with the women’s mission group; regularly participated in visitation and outreach; and met with other women at church almost every week to pray for her pastor and others.

In her community, Rachel volunteered to answer phones and pray with those who called into a TV station, where she got Daymond involved in a program called Ask the Pastor. She also for many years led Bible studies for a group of folks who gathered at a local restaurant.

Rachel loved to go on mission trips and joined as many as she could, despite the fact that she had knee and hip replacements. Other church members sometimes pushed her in a wheelchair, etc., but Rachel was determined to go and minister for long hours even though she was not well. On two different occasions, Rachel had to be hospitalized when she returned from a mission trip.

On the inside cover of her Bible were Rachel’s handwritten words: “Make yourself irreplaceable.” That is exactly what she did. At her funeral, her pastor said, “It will take three or four people to replace Rachel at church.”

It is difficult to understand why God took Rachel with this world being in the mess it’s in, but Daymond believes with all his heart that he will see Rachel in the Rapture very soon.

This commentary will, I anticipate, meet with considerable eye-rolls and head-shaking.

What a fuddy-duddy, I can imagine the thinking will be behind the eye rolls and the head shakes. (The very fact that I use the term “fuddy-duddy” makes me a candidate for the very dementia to which I, at least cursorily, link their beloved devices.)

By the term “dementia,” I refer to a spiritual condition rather than a physical-mental one. Although medical studies put forth that total absorption in the cyberspace of the devices that are everywhere we look can cause organic disturbances, the spiritual damage might be, in my view, incalculable.

Smartphones and the many other devices that demand all but total allegiance to their human automatons are used by the powers and principalities in high places in their wicked endeavors. That is, the observably, highly addictive instruments turn the already-fallen minds of people, young and old, to directions other than toward God, who created humankind to fellowship with Him and to be His family for eternity.

We’re seeing the results of Satan having brought about the Twitterverse—a generation of social media-transfixed people who now have or are rapidly moving toward thinking in any direction other than God.

Of course I’m not referring to everyone in social media. Not every user of Facebook, Twitter, or other social media venues engage within the arenas of anti-God thinking. Many ministries use these as tools to put forward teachings from the Bible and the saving gospel message (that is, if their posts or tweets or whatever aren’t banned or taken down).

However, the vast majority of device users are held in what seems to be inescapable gravity. Those caught in the grip of cyberspace, by and large, think and communicate in terms that encompass anything but things of God and the Bible. The result is fulfillment of Bible truth. When people get away from principles of how to live God’s way, upside-down or reprobate thinking becomes the norm.

The devices have evolved from instruments for entertainment to those designed to evoke and cultivate a collective mindset that more and more embraces anti-biblical actions and activities. I believe it explains, at least in part, the insanity we are witnessing in every direction we look.

Again, here are the apostle Paul’s words that frame the matter. It’s an all-encompassing and powerful indictment from on high, to be sure.

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; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. (Romans 1: 28-31)

Just like in the case of any human invention, the devices are not in themselves evil. In my teenage years, I heard all the warnings that TV would be the ruination of the nation with entertainment from the devil-influenced minds in Hollywood.

Well, I’m not so certain that those warnings weren’t well placed. I sure didn’t think so at that time. Neither, I’m sure, will the youth or even the more mature device users of today agree with my thoughts here.

But to anyone who looks around and is honest, this world suffers from a dementia that grows progressively worse. It has brought about a divide, a schizophrenia, within the culture in America.

I maintain that it is the electronic device instrumentalities that have at least exacerbated, if not engendered, the cultural and societal divide. I propose it is the all-pervasive electronic devices that are culpable in the matter of the reprobate mindset that has developed in this time so near the end of the age.

I was recently sent an article that, in my estimation, helps explain how Satan and his minions, both human and demonic, have been able to induce anti-God thinking through the ubiquitous electronic devices of our time.

The article was by a person who worked within mental institutions of earlier times.

What is happening today in the West increasingly reminds me of what I saw in that long-stay mental hospital many decades ago, but is less humane.  Today, when a person displays signs of deviating from political correctness, the cultural overseers leap into action and denounce the behavior and the culprit, whose guilt is incontestable.  If confession, contrition, and penance are not instantly forthcoming, the only sentence is to be declared a “far-right bigot,” with the likely result that the mainstream news media will then pick up the story and try to ruin what is left of the pitiful target’s life.  Only the most courageous and resourceful will stand fast to their values and principles and defy the modern Maoist cultural revolutionaries of the radical progressive liberal-Left.  The task of enforcement by the latter is, however, made considerably easier by the almost ubiquitous Smartphone, which makes social conditioning extremely easy.

The Smartphone functions as a virtual Skinner box.  The original Skinner box was constructed of clear Perspex inside which a hungry pigeon pecked at a lever.  A reward of grain was delivered only for the desired behavior.  Today the box is virtual, as humans tap the keys of their smartphones.  Usage of social media from these smartphones appears to be highly addictive, and can turn even previously well-adjusted people into obsessive narcissists who crave ‘likes’ and will leap onto any bandwagon in an attempt to increase their virtual popularity.

Combine this with the credulousness and gullibility of willingly impressionable youth and one has the ideal material for social conditioning.  Hence the smartphone as a virtual Skinner box.  The radical progressive liberal-Left have—with great enthusiasm—seized upon this opportunity to socially-condition the young and anyone else with high suggestibility, and are intent on turning tens of millions of people into compliant instruments of their political will.

The astonishing feature of all this is that the involuntary but mostly compliant subjects of this vast experiment in social engineering appear to lack any insight into what is being done to them.  They have surrendered their critical faculties to invisible minders who program them to feel emotions, think thoughts, deliver utterances, and commit acts at the behest of hidden controllers who can avoid taking any responsibility for what ensues.  And, perhaps most alarming of all, these cultural automatons are voluntarily giving up their cultural history, allowing it to be replaced by political propaganda which misrepresents the past.  The result is that such people live in a present that is created and controlled by someone else, as is their future.  Their lives are no longer their own, yet they are oblivious of this. (“The West is One Vast Social Engineering Experiment,” Len Wryte, American Thinker, https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/the_west_is_one_vast_social_)

Although there is more than enough anti-God thinking and behavior to go around—in both major political parties in America—one, in particular, is manifesting dementia that can’t be missed. Even the person chosen to be its presumptive candidate in the upcoming presidential election is front and center in exhibiting the reprobate thinking. And I don’t mean to be cruel with my assessment.

The proposals and rhetoric of this particular political party go against practically every former rationale in the political process for appealing to Americans who love and want the best for their nation. This proves, I’m convinced, the degree of reprobate thinking that now infects their ranks.

That party’s leadership apparently insanely believes that a majority of Americans now want to tear down the nation’s founding and rebuild with ideology and structure of a socialist/Marxist sort.

I don’t think it to be taken out of context to use the following in the matter of devices and dementia. Neither do I mean it to be taken as a pun or tongue-in-cheek. God’s Word is truth.

Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices. (2 Corinthians 2: 11)

I want to let it go, but I can’t. It’s central to the very wrap-up of this quickly fleeting age.

The mask is a symbol of the work of the most enslaving master ever to exist. The mask master is working his deluding evil and sophistry in ways that could not have been imagined even by Orwell, Huxley, or any of the dystopian fiction writers of past or present. And, that slave-master has done so in only a matter of a few months in ways that are astounding.

The realization is brought into high-definition focus in an audio that was brought to my attention the past week. I’m sure a number of readers here have already viewed it.

I hope it hasn’t been removed by the time you try to access it.  Here’s the link:

(I had slight difficulty in getting to the audio, so I hope you don’t experience the same problem. I had to paste the link into the browser, as clicking on the link brought up the message that the site could not be accessed. It’s worth the effort, even though the ominous narration is quite disconcerting. It is nonetheless truth, not conspiracy, that is plainly laid out.)

The title of the audio is “It’s Only a Mask.” The narrator, in a sinister tone, presents all that’s taken place since the coronavirus was announced. He explains the ease with which the masses in America and around the world have been brought under the covering of a face mask in ways that have isolated us from each other and insulated us from corporate worship of God. He tells in stark, unambiguous terms just how we’ve been manipulated into lemming-like conduct. We are, the narrator implies, about to become more enslaved than the slaves of America’s past that are the center of the legitimate protests and at the hate-filled anarchy ripping at the nation.

Most who have no understanding of the manipulations within the “high places” of Ephesians 6:12 will likely view the message as mere fear-mongering rhetoric. Believe me—rather, believe your own spiritual senses—while you listen. This is a plan—a blueprint for enslavement—being carried out—and not simply by the globalists elite, as the naive narrator portrays the threat to our liberty. It is a devilish strategy spawned within the “powers and principalities of wickedness in high places” of, again, Ephesians 6:12.

Knowing the evil Satan and his minions—both demonic and human—intend for America and the world, it’s easy to understand why our Redeemer is called “the blessed hope.” Jesus Christ is the only hope for a world where the stage is being set for the final act of human history. You can be absolutely assured that Jesus will, ultimately, unmask the mask master and sit on the throne of this cleansed, pristine planet.

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

The prophetic cry for peace and safety is almost always seen as involving fear generated by the threat of the breakout of war. Particularly, the prophecy is thought to be scheduled to emerge to the forefront of end-times conditions as Christ’s return nears.

Further, that almost universal cry is believed by many to be centered around the fear of war breaking out because of Israel confronting its immediately surrounding, hostile neighbors.

The following prophecy by the apostle Paul frames the matter:

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. (1 Thessalonians 5:1–3)

The apostle’s use of pronouns makes it clear that he delineates between the people he is addressing (fellow believers) and “them”—those upon whom sudden judgment is scheduled to fall.

And, incidentally, this is exactly the same pronouncement Jesus makes upon the rebellious generation when He next catastrophically intervenes. (Read Luke 17:26–30.)

This means that the judgment of God is meant for those who don’t know Christ for salvation and who will be crying for “peace and safety” when the “day of the Lord” is introduced by a “thief in the night” intervention. 

The question then arises: Why does Paul say that “of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you”?

He then goes on to tell us that we know perfectly well that the ‘thief in the night” experience will introduce the day of the Lord. He says further that this time will be marked by “they” who will be crying for “peace and safety.”

This being a heads-up to us—Paul’s “brethren”; that is, Christians—it is essential to understand the matter of “peace and safety.” This is how we can know the general time frame of the “thief in the night” event.

Folks, that’s the time of the Rapture!

We should, Paul tells us, “know perfectly well” that when they are crying “peace and safety,” the Rapture is at hand. Judgment will then fall on those who aren’t our “brethren,” the lost who will be left behind when Jesus calls to the Church.

We’ve been hearing for decades the “cry for peace and safety.” The efforts to bring about peace in the world, particularly, in the Middle East, are legendary. The effort has been never ending, yet there are wars and rumors of war, and the quest goes on.

I want us to consider this matter from a different perspective for a moment.

There is a cry for peace and safety by the world’s populations at this very time in history. As a matter of fact, the fear of war being waged by the tiny entity called COVID-19 is so great that it shut down the entire movement of earth’s peoples for the most part. It has more than 90 percent of people in America believing they must wear masks to survive the battle against the coronavirus.

Media and governments tell us we must stay sheltered and apart from each other until a vaccine is developed and vaccinations are mandated and injected. The world is crying “peace and safety” in a way never witnessed. They want freedom of fear from an enemy they can’t even see.

Christians are also crying for “peace and safety.” It is, however, for a much more profound sort.

Almost every email I receive from those who look at the world through the lens of Bible prophecy are expressing their wishes for Christ to Rapture His own. They want to escape the things they see about to overwhelm this judgment-bound planet. They want the peace and safety offered by the glory of Heaven. It is a righteous cry for help.

Let’s take heart with great anticipation as we see that day approaching. Let’s look with thoughts of the “blessed hope” of Titus 2:13 at the balance of the prophecy Paul left believers with before he departed Heaven through the Romans’ sword of beheading.

But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do. (1 Thessalonians 5:4–11)

We just returned from a trip to Crane, Missouri, near Branson. The purpose of the trip was to tape four programs for Skywatch-TV, Tom Horn’s up-and-coming television production that covers an ever-widening range of biblical topics. The program concentrates especially on matters as they relate to esoteric things going on behind the scene and to today’s societal and cultural developments.

Their expanding television and ministry facilities are impressive, with much more to come, Tom explained. My traveling companion and great friend, Mike Hile, as always, enjoyed the warm hospitality.

More than that, the conversations, both in private with the Skywatch folks and during actually taping the programs, was stimulating, although profoundly troubling in what the future might hold for the nation and the world in the immediate future.

At the same time, there was the interjection of what is just ahead in the magnificent future that awaits those who believe and trust the promises from God’s Word.

The programs center on two books that are upcoming. The first is a book authored by my good friend Tom Horn and myself with the title Antichrist and the Final Solution. The other is the new book by my good friend, Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis. The title of his book is Collision Course: The Fight to Reclaim Our Moral Compass Before It Is Too Late. Bob is a retired army officer, Pentagon think-tank consultant, and frequent contributor to Fox News.

Many things came from the interview that emerged to the surface as we probed a number of important signals that this generation is deeply into the last of the last days.

The one thing that struck me in our on-air conversations as the single most relevant development was the way many people across America today seem to be in an almost hypnotic state. By that, I mean they seem to have lost the ability to discern—to delineate—between things of fact and fiction in matters that impact how we live and interact.

The one example that strikes me in this regard is the matter of wearing face masks. More and more, this is proving to be more detrimental than beneficial. Breathing one’s own carbon dioxide, for example, can lead to oxygenation problems in the blood as well as bacterial infections. Face masks can also have a cultural ill effect in that they prevent us from seeing facial expressions in our social interaction –something that goes against the freedom to “know” each other as God created humankind to do.

A nation divided against itself cannot stand, as Lincoln put it, based upon Jesus’ words. We have been divided by the insistence of the CDC—in effect, by one doctor within that organization.

People are divided in our nation as never before in this way.

It has caused problems. For example, on numerous occasions I’ve witnessed developing confrontations. I’ve noticed more and more that people wearing masks in public verbally chastise others for not doing so. Total strangers are increasingly at odds over whether to wear the masks or not. It is beginning to take on the same kind of confrontation as is seen in road rage. People are divided in this way, and I’m convinced this is a deliberate part of a master plan.

The master plan, although carried out by those such as the CDC as they insist on mask-wearing, etc., is in fact being orchestrated by Satan. And, it seems to be working.

If there was ever a question of whether an entire population could be brought under a delusion such as that prophesied in 2 Thessalonians 2, there should no longer be much doubt.

People in these days of COVID-19 have been shown to be lemmings in slavish adherence to total shutdown of life’s activities. They will wear the masks, lose their jobs, let their children be ruined by keeping them from school, and be subject to a plethora of other deleterious societal, cultural, and even physiological and psychological dictates.

This is perhaps the primary realization that came from my participation on the programs we taped. We don’t have to wonder whether people could actually be brought under such a delusion as prophesied by the apostle Paul. We are already seeing that delusion taking shape, I think. The master planner is at work. His minions are at work, too.

As we reach the conclusion of human history, we are seeing develop that grand delusion—the big lie—that will eventually enslave the earth’s populations. People are being prepared—being mesmerized, at least in my opinion—for what is to come when the restraining work of the Holy Spirit is no longer in effect as it is prior to the Rapture of the Church.

Lt. Col. Maginnis revealed many things within Washington DC about what is going on behind the scenes. There are dark forces at work that even eclipse what we know from the surface evil perpetrated by what has become known as the deep state.

He also repeatedly offered the biblical prescription for staving off, at least for a time, the onset of the great delusion that is surely coming.

The upcoming election is crucial. That has been said about every election we’ve had, particularly in recent decades. But this one is truly the most critical, Bob and I believe.

The prescription for retarding the progression of that delusion disease as the conclusion of the age nears is the one God has given us to take to heart. That, of course, is 2 Chronicles 7: 14.

Let us all pray that holy prescription at every opportunity in these upcoming days.

We are in what is considered by many the most troubling time in history. I would add that we are also in the most exciting time in all of history—the time very near the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to planet earth.

Considering all that is going on brings the need to think about what will be the most stunning headline ever to cross a newspaper front page or television newscast.

Much of what follows comes, with some editing, from a book I wrote many years ago.

However, with all that is transpiring with such swiftness and in such profusion, my thoughts back then might truly come to fruition at any moment.

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But a stunning headline, as suggested by this commentary’s title, will one day –perhaps very soon—leap from the front pages of the world’s major newspapers. Things bursting across the world will, in that stupefying moment, make all going on before it seem as nothing.

Newscasters will break into regularly scheduled programming on television and radio programs. The Internet will rage with the distressing revelation:

Millions have vanished, and it’s as if the planet has been turned upside-down and inside-out.

This is the one event that will grab and hold the attention of every individual on earth who has ability to understand what has happened. Panic will ensue.

What happened? What’s going on? These will be the primary questions at the heart of the fear-filled thoughts of every person who learns of the disappearances. Many will have witnessed the sudden vanishings up close and personal, as ABC sports used to put it. The planet will be abuzz with terror.

America, the nation with perhaps the largest numbers of Christians, will instantly lose its very heart. The greatest nation to ever exist, in terms of creative genius and industrial acumen and productivity, will be forever changed in a microsecond of time.

America will suffer loss as will no other country when the calamity of all calamities sweeps millions upon millions from the planet. The instantaneous disappearances will leave the nation and the world terrified—and searching for answers.

Shocking Scenes

So, getting directly to earth-bound scenarios that I speculate will immediately follow the Rapture, let’s look at some dark probabilities.

The most immediate things that assault the senses while people look around them are the clothing and other things that fall to the ground, the pavement, and the floors. The only evidence that those who suddenly vanished were ever on earth are the clothing and other personal items they no longer need. The prosthetic devices of every sort, too, give the news pundits something to talk about on the programs that are dominated by one subject: the disappearance of millions.

But in my speculative view, the most frightening, then, as the knowledge sets in, the most agonizing thing that grips the world is the fact that every single child who hasn’t reached the age of accountability for his or her soul is gone from the planet in that millisecond. Every womb of every left-behind woman who is with child at the time of the disappearances is suddenly empty. God, in that astonishing moment, makes a monumental and unmistakable statement about His opinion of when life begins!

Can we even begin to imagine the excruciating emotional explosion taking place all over the world?

With the intimately personal cataclysms still raging, other just as staggering considerations flood the fear-filled thoughts of men and women left behind.

National Chaos

Again, in America, martial law is immediately invoked. But before the much-denuded military and law enforcement personnel can regroup to enforce order, looters of every sort move freely throughout decimated society, pillaging, destroying, and raping whatever and whomever they find in their rampaging paths.

The consciences of man are no longer under the control of the Holy Spirit, as in the time just before the disappearances occurred. Homes, empty of their vanished occupants, are open game, and the looters don’t stop to give a second thought to the horrendous future mankind now faces. They think, as I heard Dr. Charles Stanley once say, they have died and gone to their warped picture of heaven.

We’ve only begun to explore what the left-behind world will be like and the likely dynamics that will rearrange the earth for Antichrist’s appearance.

People have vanished all over the world in less time than it takes for light to enter the eye and strike the retina. The chaos is worldwide, but nowhere is it as profound as within the United States of America. Just a matter of time, however, will prove that the ramifications are geopolitically staggering—for one nation in particular, in addition to America. (More about that nation later.)

The American government at every level soon determines that every child below, most likely, the teenage years is gone. Every pregnant woman who remains suffers the loss of the baby in her womb. But some other things are even more troubling to the officials:

Government in Crisis

With officials missing at every level, government is totally disrupted, and the powers-that-be quickly recognize that not even martial law is going to be able to reestablish the revenue basis for carrying on government as usual. A huge part of the tax base—a fatally proportionate one—is no longer here to provide the funds to carry on government as usual. Much of the workforce, particularly the most vital, skilled force that is the heart and soul of American industry and fidelity to the good work ethic, has disappeared in that stupefying moment.

There will be instant attention paid to formulating a completely changed monetary system to deal with the crisis.

The carnage alone caused by the many accidents and other disappearance-engendered problems require massive manpower and in many cases extraordinary skills to begin restoring order. These needed people are gone in great numbers.

Europe, on the other hand—while dumbfounded, even extremely worried over the vanishings—seems to have suffered little infrastructure damage. Economy, well structured by the European Union Parliament for the most part, has only minimum glitches in keeping things running. Now it is directed by the upper echelon of the American government that is left to advise and assist in helping with things–especially with reestablishing America’s economic base on sound footing.

Enemies on Alert

America’s particularly bad circumstances do not go without notice by others within the nation-states of the world. Russia and China take special notice. They assess how America’s military complex has been affected.

Islamics who want their religion to rule the world are delighted. The Great Satan has gotten its deserved punishment from Allah. Although Islamic children, too, have disappeared, the adults who remain in great numbers are still available to make war—and love, in order to replenish the children. The terrorist Islamic organizations are delighted, and immediately see jihad against their enemies—particularly against the Jews of the world and Israel.

Israel Comes to Attention

Israel’s governmental leaders come to two stunning realizations:

1) Their only ally, with the greatest thermonuclear deterrent in the world, is in chaos.

The US government officials who remain are doing all within their power just to make deals with the EU in order—somehow—to regain their own power. There is no time, or even facility, to see to Israel’s protection.

2) The greatest supporters of Israel and the Jews—their best friends—are no longer on the planet! While America’s top leaders who are still around are coming to understand there must be a complete rearrangement of economy and monetary matters, Israel is getting reports of plans for attack by the Arabs, Persians, and other Islamics who understand what has happened as an opportunity provided them by Allah to once-and-for-all eradicate the hated Jew and the impostor state of Israel.

Well, I leave it to you to paint your own picture of what transpires from this point. Just read the book of Revelation and the Old Testament books of Joel, Zechariah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others to fill out your own scenarios.

Paul the apostle’s words will be a good place to start forming your own conclusions in thinking about the return of Jesus as given in Revelation 19:11.

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.

Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.

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.

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 2:3–12)

The past weekend this nation celebrated Independence Day 2020. The holiday is a sort unlike any celebrated by any other country in earth’s history. There will never be a holiday of its like again this side of Christ’s next intervention into the sordid and sorry affairs of man.

I can say this with certitude—at least within my own view—because America is the last hope, in human terms, for freedom to the extent America has enjoyed that blessing for 244 years. We are witnessing liberty’s last gleaming.

When thinking on this commentary, I first thought to title it “Why America Is Lost.” The thought was that the nation has since some time in the 1950s begun the dismantling of all that is good about her, as French philosopher and admirer of America, Alexis de Tocqueville, would have it.

By the late 1950s, influences by Karl Marx and especially of Charles Darwin, as well as by other anti-God minions, had so invaded the educational process in America as to weaken the undergirdings that held erect America’s “goodness.”

That “goodness” is the Judeo-Christian principles upon which the founding fathers placed the republic they created. By 1963, those principles had eroded to the point that prayer and Bible reading were banished in public classrooms. The Ten Commandments became anathema to the new masters of education. There were actually statements made to the effect that the commandments should not be posted anywhere in public places—especially not within public classrooms. The rationale? Because the children might actually read them and begin to think they have to obey and practice them. That insanity is recorded for anyone who cares to research it. I’m not making it up, as they say.

I remember a thirty-something-year-old professor standing before my political science class in my freshman year at college lauding the marvels that Marxism-Leninism offered as opposed to the evil presented by American adventurism and bloody war-making since the founding. By then, the erosion of American “goodness,” thus its “greatness,” was well underway.

So, as I say, I started to give this commentary the title, “Why America Is Lost.” I thought to present the fact that the disease of anti-God inculcation has so infected America at its core that the nation cannot be spared the inevitable fall that God’s righteousness—the only goodness that exists—ultimately demands.

As de Tocqueville and any observer within the realm of rationality would rightly conclude, America has lost her goodness, her godly foundational mooring. So she has lost her greatness (the gleaming of freedom as testimony to God providing certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).

We have allowed the “wickedness in high places”—those principalities and powers in the lofty perches of academia and government—to replace the godly foundations. The nation has been and is at this moment being deconstructed by lawlessness in an avalanche of tearing down all values formerly held to as suitable for a good and moral people.

Founders like Franklin and Adams forewarned about dangers intrinsic within the populace ever abandoning the Judeo-Christian base they had erected. Any other people than a morally based, truly free people, they consistently forewarned, are unsuitable for God-given governance. Any people not firmly moored by such providentially influenced foundation are ultimately destined to lose their liberty, was the message.

That those liberties implicit and explicit within the Bill of Rights are even at this moment under assault cannot be denied. The anarchists, arsonists, and so-called deconstructionists of the radical left make liberty’s last gleaming a manifest destiny for Americans.

The Democrat party champions those who are fomenting a cultural revolution that mimics those of Mao and others. Lawlessness rules in major cities where the reprobate thinking of Democrat mayors and governors agrees with the Marxist demands that law enforcement be eliminated through defunding and other means.

The Republican Party for the most part refuses to stand up against the evil that has taken over much of the nation’s youth—the Millennial generation. From kindergarten through doctoral programs, these have been victims of a satanically influenced cabal of anti-God educators for more than six decades. The title, “Why America Is Lost,” therefore, would be appropriate for an article in this day and time.

But the impression struck as the depression deepened in thinking on these matters. “You have left out one ingredient to all this seeming madness afflicting the nation and world.”

Indeed, I had left out the most important ingredient when thinking on the insanity raging within our nation and beyond. That factor is God’s staying hand.

America, although it shows every indicator of precipitous decline from which there seems no escape, remains the freest nation on earth. Its economy, already untenable because of debt extrapolated into hundreds of trillions of dollars for future generations, remains intact, despite suffering a complete shutdown due to a largely contrived virus threat. Most of the nation’s heartland continues to function and show progress toward a return to a degree of normalcy, despite the most vicious attempts imaginable by globalist diabolists in DC and other capitals of the world to rip American sovereignty and autonomy to shreds.

It is incontrovertibly true from the perspective of Bible prophecy, within the observations of those spiritually attuned. God continues to restrain the raging efforts to bring down this supernaturally inspired experiment in liberty. America will be here, I’m believing, until that restraint is withdrawn when Christ calls all born again believers to Himself.

Meantime, it is incumbent to pray fervently that He who sits in Heaven—and obviously has the rebels of planet earth in derision as in Psalm 2—continues to restrain the satanically enraged evil with His omnipotent, staying hand.