The questions continue about whether the revived Roman Empire predicted to produce the Antichrist will be from Rome or from the Eastern leg–which refers to the Middle East. In fact, there seems a more stringent insistence by the day that the beast of Revelation 13 will be a Muslim.

Developments taking place within the economic structures of Europe provide much of the fodder for the champions of the Mideast Antichrist theory. These proponents point to what they see as the unraveling of the European Union as indicative that it is losing, not gaining, power. A couple of such developments they point to are the so-called Brexit —the exit of Great Britain from the Eu and the fact that Germany is reported to be printing money at a frenzied pace. It is printing deutsche mark notes, not euros. This is apparently because there is great fear that the eurozone sovereign debt crisis will end in a return to national currencies.

The following news item from several years ago frames this feared collapse:

[The]…British Foreign Office has issued warnings to embassies in the eurozone to prepare to handle the problems of its expatriates who may be unable to access local bank accounts and face rioting mobs. Perhaps this is only an example of highly developed countries planning for all eventualities but disaster planning always adds to fear as it shows that the previously unthinkable is now being contemplated: a break-up of the eurozone single currency. (“Germany Returning to Deutsche Mark?” SilverDoctors.com, 8/18/12)

European officials continue to express their concerns about the fiscal turmoil that threatens what was once the most powerfully growing economic entity on the planet.

Make no mistake: The European Union continues on its ascent and will soon be in position to be the superstructure from which Antichrist will launch his campaign to dominate the world and oppose everything of God. And this leads to the second question that I find predominant in the thinking of many today.

My ten-part series at the close of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, entitled “Scanning a Fearful Future,” deals with this question in depth. So, I suggest the inquisitive reader look into that series. Basically put, the question is: What is ahead in America’s future?

As of late, one of the primary news items that has made this question front and center involves U.S. government making strange preparations. For what? Well…that is the crux of the major expressions of concern I’m hearing. An article brought to my attention time after time by those who write involves the massive purchases of ammunition by government agencies that traditionally have had nothing to do with military or policing responsibilities. The questions are legitimate matters for investigation, I think.

One retired general of the U.S. Army wrote some years ago the following:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) confirms that it is purchasing 174 thousand rounds of hollow point bullets to be delivered to 41 locations in major cities across the U.S. No one has yet said what the purpose of these purchases is, though we are led to believe that they will be used only in an emergency to counteract and control civil unrest. Those against whom the hollow point bullets are to be used — those causing the civil unrest — must be American citizens; since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens. (Maj. Gen. Jerry Curry, USA (Ret.), “Who Does the Government Intend to Shoot?” Daily Caller)

The general asks a legitimate question when he asks who would be the intended victims of these hollow-point bullets–ammunition, incidentally, that is outlawed by the Geneva Convention. These are outlawed on the field of battle because of their lethality. I know, I know–that seems like some sort of a schizophrenic rule. Isn’t the purpose of war to kill? But, the hollow point is so devastating that even the war makers of the world want it outlawed because of the damage it does to living tissue upon impact. We won’t debate the insanity of that matter here.

The retired general poses the question: “Potentially each hollow-nose bullet represents a dead American. If so, why would the U.S. government want the SSA to kill 174,000 of our citizens, even during a time of civil unrest?”

He goes on to offer some rather frightening thoughts. What if the hollow-point bullets were, rather than for civilians, for military personnel who might oppose the administration ruling the nation at the time of severe crisis? What if that ammo was used to give power, instead, to forces loyal to and under the auspices of Homeland Security?

Whether this sort of dark scenario cogitation is warranted as we watch things deteriorate in our nation, I suggest it is at the heart of the questions being raised by those who watch the slumping of our society and culture toward Sodom and Gomorrah-type comportment. The Lord of Heaven, I contend, still has His staying hand of control on matters in this nation, Europe, and around the planet. Else all would have long since imploded.

I believe He will take His hand off, according to 2 Thessalonians 2, when the Holy Spirit withdraws from acting on the consciences of humanity. The greatest crisis of human history will then unfold. Perhaps we are seeing the preparations, unknowingly, by governments even now for that stunning moment when Jesus steps out on the clouds of Glory and shouts to His bride, the church, “Come up here!”

Two questions, among many, loom large among some within the ranks of those who believe we are at the very end of the Church Age (Age of Grace). I’m hearing about them every day by those who email, and in conversation.

The first matter involves the question of whether, based upon developments in the Middle East and the expansion of Islam into Europe and other places, those who hold to the Islamist Antichrist belief could be correct. Could those who hold to the Western leg of the Roman Empire being the geographical base from which the beast will come, after all of this time spent adhering to that view, be mistaken–having read the prophecy of Daniel 9: 26-27 erroneously?

Certainly, for the Islamist or eastern leg Antichrist view to be brought up by those who are doing so is not heresy, as some dogmatists might have it. While I, personally, maintain that Daniel was given a definite heads-up that the “prince that shall come” will be from the people who comprised the heart of the Roman Empire (western Europe), I can understand reasons for thinking –especially with developments taking place all around us— that a case might be made that Islam is the prophesied beast system, and that Antichrist will be from the people who made up the eastern leg of the Roman Empire.

There is great quaking within the European Union at present, as there is in America, and we will examine some of these things, in view of the relatively new proclamations that the Antichrist will be a Muslim.

The Bible calls that future and last tyrant of the dispensation of earth’s history before the Second Advent of Christ “the Assyrian.” There’s no question that the man, himself, will be of Middle Eastern extraction. Additionally, all geopolitical movement–both in biblically prophetic terms and in terms of what is happening today–is shifting back to the geographical lands surrounding God’s touchstone city, Jerusalem. All attention is on that region, primarily because of its potential for producing nuclear conflict, which would engulf the whole world. An only slightly less powerful exigency that affects the entire world –particularly the Western world—is the influence petroleum exerts on geopolitics.

With the present presidential administration refusing to tap into Canada’s vast quantities of oil, and with its determination to fight the development of America’s own great reserves, the oil-rich Middle East is rapidly becoming even a more volatile point of potential conflict. It is, in my view, almost certainly the “spoil” which Ezekiel was told to prophesy will bring Gog and his Magog forces into the land of the Bible.

By the time of that attack, something catastrophic, apparently, will have happened to the United States. It is almost a guarantee that the economic powers that be–and they are who controls all the world so far as geopolitical power is concerned—would never sit by idly and watch the great petroleum interests that fire the engines of their wealth-empire be taken over by a Russian leader and a swarm of Islamist Jew-haters. But, according to the Ezekiel prophecy, the Western powers apparently send merely a note of diplomatic protest. Very strange…

It is as if the Western leadership knows that the forces of Gog-Magog will be unsuccessful. Of course, they will be more than merely unsuccessful. They will be utterly decimated, with all but one-sixth of them totally destroyed, God’s Word tells us. Satan, of course, controls/influences all sides in humanism’s war against God. He knows Bible prophecy. He believes all of it, I think, except the part that says he loses in the end. His man, Antichrist, will understand that if he just reserves his strength, he will have it for the really big take-over, after God, Himself, obliterates his Middle Eastern opposition. He will still have to contend with the forces from far-distant Asia, but in his arrogance, he will have confidence he can handle that problem when it must be faced.

All of that is just a scenario, as I’m convinced God’s Word teaches it, with my postulations thrown in for good measure. So, it does nothing to prove that Antichrist will be either from the Western leg or from the Eastern leg. We will, of course, have to learn the truth about that after the fact–from the portals of Heaven, for all who are born again into the family of God.

But, when looking at what Daniel the prophet was given to tell us about the “prince that shall come,” we must consider who the people who destroyed the city and the sanctuary were. That is, who destroyed Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple atop Mount Moriah?

The argument by the latecomer, band-wagon jumping, Eastern-leg proponents includes the claim that the forces that destroyed the city and sanctuary were comprised of people indigenous to the region, who made up the Roman legions assigned to control the area. While those of the Middle East did mingle with the Roman soldiers, they were under the very imposing thumb of Romans who dictated from the city of Rome.

General Titus, the son of Emperor Vespasian, was in charge. He and his father gave and saw to it that the put down of the Jewish insurrection was accomplished. Both were Romans in the Western-leg sense. They were head of the people of Rome–the Western leg–who destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in A.D. 70.

We must remember that the Eastern leg of the empire wasn’t established for another three centuries, when Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) became the Roman Empire’s Eastern capital in AD 330. Daniel’s prophecy – later reflected upon by Jesus Christ, who gave it to the prophet in the first place—told of the Romans’ destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple when there was no Eastern leg. Further, there was no Islam until more than six centuries later than the prophesied destruction. Thus, I conclude that any validity to the claim that Daniel –and Jesus—were referring to a “people” from the Middle East, Muslim world, who would produce “the prince that shall come” as untenable.

There are other reasons why the eastern or Muslim Antichrist doesn’t fit the prophecy, but I must move on. Next week, Lord willing, we will look at the second question I’m getting regularly that is involved in the quaking in Europe and America.

Rumors of war in the Middle East continue and grow by the day. We have heard of such Armageddon-like conflict that is coming for most of a decade. It’s almost like the little boy who cried “wolf,” but not quite.

Anyone with any sense of the potential for conflagration in that volatile region that could bring worldwide war knows that the breaking point has now about been reached. Iran’s nuclear weapon development project–or the fear that their nuclear program is for developing weapons of mass destruction—is, of course, the primary reason for the tensions involved.

Three observable factors are on the stepped-up agenda of potential war consideration: 1) Israel is in a top-alert configuration, talking more or less openly about its most advanced defensive capabilities; 2) Iran is expressing fear of imminent attack from Israel, and is hustling to protect its nuclear program; 3) The Israeli prime minister and his military have a strong sense that they must depend only on their own resolve, not that of their one-time staunch, superpower ally to defend the Jewish state.

Regarding point 1, Israel’s concern for its threatened citizenry is warranted.

For some years now Israeli intelligence has observed Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon progressing far beyond the scope reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Tehran has successfully developed a nuclear warhead for a Shahab-3 missile, which has a range of nearly 1,000 miles, putting the whole of Israel within the Islamic republic’s range.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has long declared to the world Israel’s determination regarding Iran’s developing such capability.

“Every threat against the home front is dwarfed by one threat. Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.”

To punctuate the urgency, Israel’s home front command, in test runs of alerting the populace, issues thousands of text messages to alert people when rockets are launched on specific areas of the country. the text messages are given in Hebrew, Arabic, English, and Russian. The Israeli government also has made clear their preparation for attacks in reporting Israel’s increased national defense preparations in announcing deployment of advanced technologies such as Iron Dome and Arrow 2.

On point 2, reports grow about Iran’s fears of attack by Israel, thus convincing them to deeply shelter its nuclear program at a quickening pace.

Regarding point 3, Israel’s distrust for the American presidential administration’s support is understandable and that government these days makes little effort to hide the fact. While Israel’s government and military has presented evidence time after time that its most threatening enemy, Iran, is driving for a nuclear bomb, the U.S. intelligence services, obviously controlled by the Obama administration, say only that they suspect that the Iranian regime–although that regime has declared that it is committed to removing Israel from the earth–is seeking a weapons capability but that no decision has been taken on actually making one.

Such naiveté at best and willful disregard for the facts at worst is itself heightening the danger of all-out war in the Middle East, in my opinion. The buildup to such conflict continues apace–and increases by the hour. It is obvious–to this observer, at least—that only the staying hand of God is holding back the inevitable. I am convinced that when the inevitable comes–the massive devastation that will involve the whole world—it will be the sudden destruction that will follow immediately the Rapture of the Church, as indicated by Jesus’ own Words: “But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” (Luke 17:29-30).

Stepping out of the Wellington Hotel on Seventh Avenue, my friend, Mike, and I traversed the concrete time after time until my now 74-old legs hurt. I say now 74- -year old legs” because I was sixty-nine when we were in New York City those several years ago, and I turned into a septuagenarian shortly upon returning home.

I really thought I was in the best of shape. That is, the best of shape for one who had just a year and a half earlier been clinically dead three times in the space of an hour due to a “widow maker” heart attack, on Good Friday, April 22, 2011. My cardiac workouts over those months sense the heart “event,” as I like to call it, took me on an hours-upon- hours ordeal of going nowhere on a treadmill with a vicious incline and speed of operation. Yet, I came back to the hotel room each time and lay with my legs draped over one of those large, round, tubular pillows that my wife tells me are really there just for decoration. Walking in the big city is much different than walking on the treadmill, I found out.

So, biting into the Big Apple was a painful experience physically, much as biting into the Edenic apple (or whichever fruit it was) was painful both physically and spiritually for Adam, Eve, and all of the rest of us. But take a bite out of the apple we did, and we are prayerfully hoping that the seeds planted during that visit will bear spiritual fruit.

I received a request for the interview from a Canadian film company asking that I agree to answer some questions on camera about Bible prophecy. They particularly wanted to talk about the Rapture, after having visited www.raptureready.com and reading some of the thousands of articles on the topic posted there.

Todd Strandberg, the founder of the site– and I have agreed that any on-camera interviews will be done by me, since I’m such a ham. Actually, that wasn’t the reason we decided that I do the on-camera stuff, but the quip fits the jocular motif I wish to establish for the moment. Actually, there is some rather ironic humor in a blind guy doing all of the on-camera work–wouldn’t you agree?

That said, the subject and our purpose in agreeing to the request is a most serious matter. Talking about God’s prophetic timeline and the Rapture at this advanced stage of the Age of Grace is most critical for people around the world. The urgency made my answer to the producer’s request the only one we could give the filmmakers.

Whether to do the interview in the city that has been called “Babylon on the Hudson”–New York City—was a more serious twist of irony, as I considered and agreed to make the trip. I’m more than glad I did. I’m thankful for the opportunity to get the truth of where this generation stands at this crucial point in the nation’s history before the eyes and ears of America and the world. I am even more thankful that we put that truth on film in the most influential city and in the most influential part of that city, in the view of the people of most of the Western world.

Every year, the New Year is celebrated as it arrives at Times Square in the heart of that great metropolis. As the big, glittering ball drops, the masses gathered there shout the countdown in unison and break into deafening cheering when the ball reaches the bottom. The Canadian film crew placed me directly in front of where the ball reaches bottom, framing the interview within the area where the big clock is positioned in the background.

The masses went about their many activities while I answered the producer’s questions and the cameraman shot the film, occasionally stopping me to reload the cameras. The ambient noises in that great city are stunning, with people’s voices in conversation or shouting, vehicles honking, sirens blaring, and all the other sounds that town generates. Times Square is the center of the most frenetic activity, and although the producer stood near enough for me to hear his questions, my friend Mike and our friend Chris, a native New Yorker, said they couldn’t hear either the questions or the responses. Fortunately, the microphone was attached to my tie, just beneath my chin, so my words were easily picked up by the recording devices connected to the cameras.

The first question was simply a request, something along the lines of, “Will you tell us about the Rapture, and talk about what happens from now until the Rapture?”

Interviewers, particularly those in secular media, are often naïve with their questions. They have little understanding of matters involved in the pretribulational view of the Rapture, for example. To answer questions such as this one requires much longer than these venues have time to include. So, trying to be precise and to the point is always the challenge.

I responded that there is nothing that must happen from that point until the Rapture, so far as Bible prophecy is concerned. That was precise enough. But, then, I felt it necessary to go into what is in fact going on right now that makes us know the Rapture is imminent. That line-up of current issues and events and what the future of the Middle East–for example—might hold, seemed to pique the producer’s interest, and he wanted to know about what is the most important of these “signs of the end of days.”

They always like that phrase, “the end of days.”

My immediate, precise answer was, of course, that Israel is at the center of the world’s spotlight, with a diplomatic proposal in process of attempting to force peace between Israel and its enemy neighbors–all surrounding Islamic countries. These things are exactly as God’s prophetic word says will be the case at the very end of the age.

Most important, the interview offered me the opportunity to give God’s plan of salvation, which I hope I did to the Lord’s satisfaction. It was up to Him to make certain it survived the cutting room floor, once they began putting the documentary and weekly program together. I have no doubt that He saw to it.

Our question in this commentary is: What is the primary characteristic of our day that is like that which was prevalent during the days of Noah and of Lot? As I hope we saw in the last article, Jesus recounted those ancient times in prophetic terms, pointing out that times at some future date will be just like those days were when He next catastrophically intervenes in the affairs of mankind.

We looked at how–in my view, at least—Jesus was talking about the time He will come for His church in the Rapture. He was not prophesying about the Second Advent at the time when all flesh will be on the cusp of destruction.

The title of our commentary is, of course, “End-of-Days Violence,” so, obviously, “violence” is the characteristic similarity prominent to both those ancient days and to our time, which I want us to examine.

There was much violence in the “days of Lot”–the days of the wicked cities of Sodom and of Gomorrah, to be sure. The violence was reported primarily through the sexual debauchery of that time. Homosexuality, in particular, pervaded society. While the days of those cities seemed almost civilized, the nights were filled with sexual violence and every sort of perversion.

We remember the angels were sought by the homosexuals of Sodom when Heaven’s messengers came to Lot’s home. But, the reference to violence that I want us to examine here–of the sort given in Jesus’ prophecy in Luke 17:26-30 and Matthew 24:32-44, as we looked at in last week’s commentary—is found in the book of Genesis: “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (Genesis 6:11-13).

While it can be said that violence–perhaps–hasn’t reached the level of Noah’s day, before the Flood, our present world can be called anything but non-violent. The murders and woundings of children in school houses, theater-goers and the slaughter of people in the pews at their churches of recent times are proof that man is as violent as at any time in human history.

We sometimes gauge everything that happens culturally and societally upon what is happening in America. This is natural, because we have a news and entertainment media that seemingly relishes dwelling on horrors such as the shooting that took place during the showing of the Batman movie of a number of years ago. It was nonstop punditry and interviews from every possible angle. It even knocked the political back-and-forth media war off the air, as both President Obama and GOP candidate Romney put their campaigns on hold for a time.

The killings were heinous acts, to be certain. But, if this were the only such act of the sort that is called a mass murder, it would hardly constitute violence that warrants me equating our times with those of Noah and Lot. Even if we count all of the recent such mass killings found in that one small area of Colorado, from the Columbine murders to the theater massacre in Aurora, we can’t necessarily make of that mayhem the equivalent of worldwide violence of prophetic significance. The literally millions upon millions of victims of war-making just since World War I is far greater evidence for Noah’s day-type violence in our time.

But, there is something about such impersonal bloodshed as found in the spree killings that viscerally affect the soul, which grabs and shakes to society’s core our foundations of pretend civility. These somehow bring to the surface of our time the sickness that proves to our collective minds that we are nearing the end of days –as secular journalists would term the prophesied end times.

And, despite some pundits in other parts of the world proclaiming that America is alone in this madness because we have such lax gun laws, a quick search of relatively recent history proves the violence is worldwide.

The following is based upon facts presented by Neil Cavuto in his weekday program for Fox News, Your World Cavuto. The history was presented on the program “Gun Violence Isn’t Unique to the U.S.” Cavuto was exercised over the fact that many on the political left were trying to once again call for more gun control. He made the point that despite nations in Europe and elsewhere having some of the strictest gun laws on the planet, this sort of murderous activity isn’t by any means restricted to the United States. I find the facts he presented to be proof that we live in a time as violent as any in history–including Noah’s day. Cavuto said he found the accusations of America as being unique in the perpetration of gun violence as totally beyond truth, and unfair.

He said this is:

Because last time I checked, Norway has among the toughest gun laws on the planet, not to mention a reputation for having among the most peaceful citizens on the planet. But that didn’t stop Anders Breivik from going on a rampage that left 77 dead–that’s right, 77–in 2011. The same year Nordine Amrani murdered seven in Belgium. Or 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer walked into a German elementary school and killed 15 people in 2009. Or a 52-year-old British taxi driver named Derrick Bird butchered 12 and injured 11 others in a four-hour violent spree back in 2010. Barely a year after Ibrahim Shkupolli stabbed and killed his ex-girlfriend, he went on to a shopping mall in Finland to kill four others. The same otherwise “peaceful” Finland, where only about a year earlier, a 22-year old culinary arts student walked into a school and killed 10 people. I could go on.

• the Birmingham, England man who killed three back in 2000.
• the Swiss kid who slaughtered 14 at the parliament in Zug in 2001.
• the 29-year-old who killed 11 and injured 6 in South Africa.
• the Slovakian man who killed 7 in a Netherlands shopping mall in 2011.
• or the 23-year-old Australian surfer named Martin Bryant, who shot dead 35 people at a popular tourist attraction there “just because he felt like it” that day.

My point is not to spread the blame but remind all, this kind of stuff isn’t unique to us. It happens everywhere. Among peoples who are peaceful, and those who are not.

In countries with tough gun laws, and those without tough gun laws.

And it’s been happening for a long time…

Like back in 1938, when Mutsuo Toi killed 30 in Japan.

Or in 1913, when Ernst August Wagner murdered 14 in Germany…(Neil Cavuto, Your World Cavuto, 7/23/12, http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/your-world-cavuto/2012/07/23/cavuto-gun-violence-isnt-unique-us]

Violence is exploding on a worldwide scale at the personal, one-on-one level to the mass and spree killings, to genocide perpetrated by the Saddam Husseins and Bashar Al Assads of the world. We are a violent race–racing, in fact, toward the Lord’s sudden and catastrophic intervention. He will bring judgment because lost mankind is incorrigible without Jesus Christ’s intervention.

God’s Word calls all to repentance before that great and terrible day of the Lord when God’s judgment and wrath must fall. Jesus wants to take all who will accept His grace gift of salvation out of the time of that judgment, which is surely almost at the point of falling upon planet earth. Here’s how to avoid being here for that devastating cleansing of this fallen world: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).

We’ll pick up this third article in our Olivet series with the next item on our list of events yet to come.

Great Tribulation (Matthew 24:21-22; Mark 13:19-20; Luke 21:25-26)

This will be a time worse than anything else in history as Jesus said:

Matthew {24:21-22} For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.

Remember that we are now in the post-Rapture world where, quite literally, all hell has begun to break loose. The reason for this can be found in the following passage from Paul in his second letter to the Thessalonians, written to dispel a false notion that the “day of the Lord” had already come:

2 Thess {2:1-9} Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and [by] our gathering together unto him,  That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. 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 . . .       

Now there is a lot of information here so it is well worth our time to explore this passage in greater detail. Let’s begin with the phrase “except there come a falling away first.” I’ve heard two interpretations of it, each with its own merit. The first says this refers to the Rapture, when all believers are rescued from Planet Earth to meet Jesus in the clouds (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). The second says it refers to a falling away from the faith. In other words, apostasy, something which is occurring in a widespread manner among the church in Europe and North America in particular, something we already discussed under “False Prophets” and “Christians Persecuted” in the initial article of this series. The original Greek term rendered as “falling away” in the above is“apostasia,” from which “apostasy” clearly comes. Therefore, in my opinion, this second interpretation has the most merit. If you think it’s bad now, during the Tribulation it will get a lot worse – along with everything else.

The reason for this is that “he (the Holy Spirit) who not letteth (wherein ‘letteth’ is translated from the Greek word ‘katecho’ which itself means ‘restrains’ in modern English)” will be gone, since those believers in whom he had taken up residence have been removed from the Earth during the Rapture. It is only then that the “man of sin” and “son of perdition (damnation)” otherwise known to us as the Antichrist is revealed and given power to ultimately bring the human race to the very brink of extinction. We also learn that this man will be imbued with satanic powers making him virtually irresistible to most of the planet’s population. Judging by just how much traction lies get over the truth these days, it isn’t difficult to believe the triumph of falsehood and evil for the last seven years of history, is it?

Many of those who study prophecy have applied the terms “Great Tribulation” to the last 3 1/2 years of the entire seven year Tribulation period and there is every reason to believe the this last half of it will truly be the worst. It will be the time after the Antichrist has suffered a fatal head wound, returned to life (Revelation 13:2-4), and invaded the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and claimed to be “God.”

Paradoxically, when this demonic figure first appears on the scene, I envision him gaining wide appeal in a very short time as the “Answer Man” appearing just as Earth thrown into turmoil by the sudden unexpected disappearance of believers (1 Corinthians 15:51-54) coupled with an intensification of all the present economic, political, social, and natural upheavals we are already experiencing today. In fact, the beginning of the Trib period might look just great.

For example, a long sought-after Middle East Peace Accord will likely come into effect with a seven year treaty that the Antichrist will confirm (Daniel 9:27), possibly averting, though only temporarily, the outbreak of a regional nuclear war that would have the prospect of growing into a worldwide cataclysm. Since we already see in our time that whatever happens in the Middle East has widespread implications, I also envision with the tensions relieved there a short-lived global economic boom. For the human race, it will undoubtedly look like Utopia is just around the corner – making it ripe for the Antichrist to exploit for his own sinister plans.

It probably won’t be very long before the euphoria begins to wear thin as Earth continues to be plagued by natural disasters and civic unrest begin to sprout up again as a result of their effects on food production and transportation. The general reaction of governments to such matters is generally one of tightening restrictions on individual liberty. If you think the population of United States would be immune from such a scenario, here is a small sample of what could happen here right from the Office of the Press Secretary of the White House as to who would control our resources in the event of an emergency:

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

March 16, 2012

Executive Order — National Defense Resources Preparedness

EXECUTIVE ORDER

NATIONAL DEFENSE RESOURCES PREPAREDNESS

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2061 et seq.), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows . . .

Sec. 201.  Priorities and Allocations Authorities.  (a)  The authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071, to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads:

(1)  the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;

(2)  the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;

(3)  the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;

(4)  the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;

(5)  the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and

(6)  the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.

(b)  The Secretary of each agency delegated authority under subsection (a) of this section (resource departments) shall plan for and issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources and establish standards and procedures by which the authority shall be used to promote the national defense, under both emergency and non-emergency conditions.  Each Secretary shall authorize the heads of other agencies, as appropriate, to place priority ratings on contracts and orders for materials, services, and facilities needed in support of programs approved under section 202 of this order.

By virtue of this being an Executive Order which bypasses Congress, we have a declaration that puts every vital resource of this country put under the absolute control of individuals who were never elected by the voters of the United States. I am also left wondering just who it is that determines what an “emergency” is. Now if such a thing can happen in America, the land of the free and the brave, it can happen anywhere! People will characteristically give up a lot of their freedom for “peace and safety.” An examination of Hitler’s rise to power and the kind of Germany he created in his image proves this point in dreadful detail. The Antichrist will institute a government based on the total control of everything on a planetary basis. One major way to accomplish this is by controlling the economy. Let’s take a look at the specific way it’ll be done.

Revelation {13:15-18} And he* had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 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. *The false prophet.

This is a subject which we covered in some length in “Prophetic Tech – Part 3″ but is worth a review. There is probably nothing else that affects an individual more than that which affects his or her personal finances. After all, what you eat, where you live, and what you wear, are the essential basics that are common to every single human being on Earth regardless of who and where they are. Control the purse strings, and you control the person. As we have seen before, those who don’t play ball with the Antichrist don’t get access to his economy. There may develop a black market of some type to circumvent the restrictions – a possibility that would explain how some post-Rapture believers will manage to survive to the very end of the Tribulation, but I have a hunch that there will be very few of them since those who refuse the mark will be systematically hunted down.  One must remember that the Antichrist government will not only have advanced technology but the dark power of Satan himself on its side to do just that. In fact, the Bible tells us quite plainly that he will for a time, “prevail against the saints” until Jesus himself returns to establish the Millennial Kingdom upon a decimated and greatly depopulated planet:

Daniel {7:20-22} And of the ten horns that [were] in his head, and [of] the other which came up*, and before whom three fell; even [of] that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look [was] more stout than his fellows. I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them. {7:22} Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom. *The Antichrist – the “horn” or leader which eventually takes over the whole world from the other “horns” who ruled previously in some manner of global government. (See Daniel 7:24-25.)

Make no mistake: this will be the worst time in the history of humankind upon the Earth so terrible that if it had not been shortened by direct Divine Intervention not even the relatively few remaining righteous souls would survive, just as Jesus said:

Matthew {24:21-22} For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.

If allowed to continue unabated, the Bible makes it clear that no one, not even the “elect” (probably referring mainly to the Jewish race and including post-Trib people who had come to believe in Jesus) would survive. The extinction of the human race would be total.

The implications of this are terrifying – it would mean that Satan wins in a scorched Earth policy from which none would be exempt. Why do I say this? Because if this came to pass, all the promises the Bible records that God made to the Hebrews in the Old Testament and true Christians in the New could never come to pass. Since it is our conviction that the Bible is 100% accurate, this would make it in error. Logically it would follow that God himself is likewise capable of error and therefore fallible.

It has always been the devil’s goal to thwart God’s plan from the very beginning (Genesis, chapter 3) all along. He has tried to destroy the Hebrews throughout history, he tried to do the same to Jesus himself and to his followers after the Ascension. The demonic persecution continues unabated even to this day and, as prophecy reveals, will intensify as we approach the close of this age.

Next time we’ll begin with looking toward the skies and examine what we might expect is coming from above.

***************************************

THE OLIVET DISCOURSE – WHAT JESUS TOLD US TO EXPECT – UPDATED

NOTES:

D = DONE

I = IN PROGRESS (But we can expect all of these to intensify as time goes by.)

F = FUTURE EVENT

* Jesus told us here that the antichrist will desecrate the temple as did Antiochus IV Epiphanes as related in Daniel 8:9-14. In Daniel 9:27, the prophet describes a second similar desecration of the temple in the midst of the antichrist’s one “week” (seven years) reign.

** Luke’s version omits the mention of the Abomination. Perhaps it relates the siege of Titus in 70 A.D., while Matthew and Mark’s versions refer to that second event that Jesus mentioned which will occur during the Tribulation.

The most profound foretelling in Bible prophecy is done by the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Great I Am, and no prophet of the Old or New testaments speaks with greater authority. Other prophets speak with authority equal to His, the argument can be made, but only because Jesus gave them the prophetic truth to pass along to the rest of us. It is His prophecy in the first place.

Despite the tremendous importance of and power manifested in Jesus’ Olivet Discourse, the earliest part of that reporting of end-times matters takes second place to another area of prophecy, as far as we are concerned today, in my view. I find Christ’s words in the following passages to be the most relevant to this very hour in which this generation finds itself:

“And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.” (Luke 17: 26-30)

As many who read these commentaries are aware, I consider this to be the most relevant prophecy to our time because of specific factors. Jesus was prophesying here about exactly how things will be in culture and society upon the earth at the time He intervenes catastrophically into the affairs of mankind. He said in these and other similar passages that things would be pretty much normal for the times, so far as human activity is concerned, at the time of His thief in the night interjection into earth’s history. People will be eating, drinking, buying, selling, building, marrying, planting, and doing other things that seem to be normal activities at the time He breaks in and reveals himself.

As I’ve written numerous times, this cannot be referring to the Second Advent (Second Coming at Armageddon–see Revelation 19:11). The twenty-one specific judgments of the scrolls, trumpets, and vials will have decimated this planet at the time of that glorious return with ten thousand of Christ’s saints. God’s wrath, Satan’s rage, and man’s gross sin and folly will have denuded the earth of, perhaps, three-fourths of human life. The radical environmentalists will see their dream come true–that of getting the planet’s population to its bare minimum.

Rather than the utopian existence they anticipate, however, it will be hell on earth at the time Christ’s foot touches down on the Mount of Olives upon His return. Remember –Jesus said that if He didn’t come back at that time, there would be no flesh left alive on this devastated sphere (Matthew 24:21). The violence that has plagued mankind will reach its crescendo as Armageddon explodes in all of its fury in the Middle East. And, the Bible indicates, no part of the globe will escape the effects of the seven-seals scroll found in Revelation chapters 6-19.

So, we look at Jesus’ Luke 17 prophecy to discover why, exactly, I say I believe it is the most relevant foretelling for our time. We first must think on the characteristics of the time of Noah and Lot’s days on earth. Again, that intervention has to be at a time when things culturally and societally are going along in a relatively normal fashion. Prophecy tells us elsewhere in the Scriptures that there will be a cry that peace and safety has arrived, when sudden destruction comes. Jesus’ break-in on the world will be like the break-in of a thief in the night, according to His own words. It will be totally unexpected by the children of the night, we are told by the apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians.

Point is, our present time frame seems to match up with another prophecy by the Lord Jesus that speaks to this business-as-usual profile. Again, we find the amazing words of Jesus himself laying out specifically how things will be. He tells these future events within the framework of the Olivet Discourse. Read carefully what He says about what those attuned to the promise of His coming can expect. Particularly, look at the last verses of this prophecy.

“But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. 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.” (Matthew 24:36-44)

Jesus was talking about the “think-not” generation that would be living at the time of the Rapture of His church. I know the seminary position has most often been that Christ was talking here about the time of His Second Advent. But, we just looked at why this isn’t possible. Societal and cultural circumstances will not be business as usual at the time of Christ’s return at Armageddon. these Scriptures can refer to none other than the calling of believers into the air to be with Him forever. (Read John 14:1-3; 1 Corinthians 15:51-55; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

So, we consider further the days of Noah and of Lot. What is the most common characteristic–and there is one in particular— that marked those times as unmistakably similar to our current time? Next week’s article will, I hope, provide an enlightening dissection of that characteristic.

Most of the following worries in the Middle East center around a number of factors: 1) Israel’s impatience with threats from its enemies; 2) Iran’s bellicose posturing in threatening to use its missiles; 3) the Syrian regime’s feared ability to wage biological and chemical warfare; and 4) (of particular concern for many Bible prophecy students) the so-called Psalms 83 war.

I term it “so-called” because I remain unconvinced that the Scriptures involved indicate a prophesied war–for reasons I will address in due course. Other factors just mentioned dominate news coming out of the region where Armageddon is foretold to bring the world together for the final and most horrific war of the age.

Israel has good reasons to be short of temper and of patience, although the leadership has shown remarkable restraint to this point. The Jewish state has been threatened with annihilation by all leaders of the Arab League at one point or the other. With the record of that leadership’s predecessors attacking viciously in the relatively recent past, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu can hardly disregard current Arab League semi-encirclement, the ring of hatred having tightened rapidly with the Muslim Brotherhood-spawned Arab Spring uprisings and now the tremendous growth of ISIS.

The Persian branch of Islamist rage has superseded the Arab rage to the point that Iran now threatens to produce weapons that can indeed do what Arabs from Nasser to Sadat and beyond could not. There remains concern that Bashar Al Assad has weapons of mass destruction in the form of biological and chemical agents that his Syrian regime might rain down on Israel’s citizenry, should the dictator begin to lose in his effort to stay in power. He has shown he can and will wage such   warfare upon his own people.

The Iranian leadership, as well as Russia, and to some extent, China, continues to back Al Assad. The Russians and China do so for the most part by refusing to allow U.N. action against the Assad regime in the Security Council, where each holds veto power. Russia has given somewhat stronger backing by moving some naval military assets into the waters nearby.

Iran, on the other hand, backs Assad with threats of military action, all the while displaying a growing missile arsenal–even demonstrably proving it now has an intercontinental ballistic missile that is capable of reaching the U.S. homeland. Iran’s apparent determination to stand by the Al Assad regime’s refusal to give up power is doubly troubling. Reports of weapons of mass destruction hidden away in Syria’s military arsenal, if more than rumors, make the threat of a Middle East conflict of major magnitude a real possibility. Iran apparently possesses the technological knowledge and hardware to assist Assad in raining terror upon Israel in order to divert attention from his own possible overthrow. He might choose all-out war if he is about to go the way of Saddam Hussein, Mubarak, and Gaddafi.

Enter one more worry voiced by many emailers of late: the Isaiah 17:1 prophecy, which follows: “The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap” (Isaiah 17:1). The Syrian capital city is, like so many other prophetic indicators today, front and center in the news headlines. The question is: Will we soon witness the complete destruction of Damascus as given in the Isaiah 17 prophecy?

Further: Might an attack on Israel on that city bring about the Psalms 83 war, bringing all of Israel’s enemies into coalition that will declare that war on the Jewish state? As stated many times in this column, most every major Islamist terrorist organization is headquartered in this, the longest continuously inhabited city in world history. A single strike of a relatively low yield nuclear weapon could do the job in a single flight of an Israeli fighter-bomber. The heads of the terrorists’ hydra-headed serpent could be lopped off in that single blow.

My belief is that the Psalms 83 matter is a prayer for God’s protection, and that it will be answered when the “many people with thee” of the Ezekiel 38-39 Gog-Magog war will be destroyed, except for one-sixth of those forces. My assessment is that whether the Psalms 83 Scripture indicates an actual war or is an imprecatory prayer for God to vanquish Israel’s surrounding enemies, the attack on Damascus–if the destruction does come from an Israeli attack—and such a war won’t happen until after the Rapture of the church.

Such an event would take the world out of the time of “business as usual,” as Jesus prophesied in Luke 17:26-30 and Matthew 24:36-42, 44, in my opinion.

Such an attack and a war would be catastrophic to the world’s economy, and in other ways that are almost incalculable. Sudden destruction comes, according to Jesus’ words in those passages, similarly to the situation in the cases of the Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah–that is, after Noah and Lot were safely out of range of harm at the time judgment fell. It fell immediately after they were safely in the ark and in the city of Zoar.

He said that as it was at that time, so will it be at the time He intervenes again into the affairs of men in a catastrophic way. Again, Luke 21: 28 are applicable. “And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”

The past number of weeks has brought a ramping up of vitriol against the doctrine of the pre-Trib Rapture to my inbox. The assault seems spearheaded by one blog thrust in particular. I receive as many as three long diatribes from this source in a single day. The accusation is that those who believe in the pre-Trib Rapture are part of what this blog entity calls the Rapture Cult.

A number of emails pour in from various individuals who, close examination uncovers, are likely in cahoots with the blog-entity initiating this latest strategy against pre-Trib Rapture teaching. These emails, without exception, use the “Margaret McDonald” accusatory proclamation. They claim that we who believe the Bible presents a pre-Trib Rapture have been taken in by the hellish vision of the nineteenth century false prophetess who is said to have also caused John Darby to fall for the lie of a pre-Trib Rapture. C. I. Scofield, the DeHaans, and the rest of us have joined and perpetuated this ” Rapture cult.”

The anti-pre-Trib blog writer points an anger-tinged condemnation of the ancient writings such as that of one called Pseudo-Ephraem. This writer from antiquity has been studied by prophecy scholars such as Grant Jeffrey and others in order to find extra-biblical validation that the pre-Trib view of Rapture was held by the early church fathers and by the early church in general.

The blogger insinuates that the very use of the title “pseudo” indicates this is a false teacher. The “genuine” Ephraem, he writes, apparently lived in the fourth century, while the “pseudo” lived in as late as the seventh. Yet he confuses his attempt to make his case by using both Ephraems to claim that they both, in the final analysis, write a firm denial of the pre-Trib Rapture.

The blogger writes of both Ephraems: “Both said the only thing ‘remaining’ is the arrival of Antichrist”–i.e., they both believed, according to him, that the Antichrist coming to power is the next prophetic event to take place. No Rapture is in view.

Grant Jeffrey plainly refutes that claim through his research. Jeffrey wrote the following in a chapter for one of my books:

1. Ephraem’s manuscript lays out the events of the last days in chronological sequence. Significantly, he began with the Rapture, using the word “imminent,” then he described the Great Tribulation of three and a half years duration under the Antichrist’s tyranny, followed by the second coming of Christ to earth with His saints to defeat the Antichrist.
2. Significantly, at the beginning of his treatise in section 2, Ephraem used the word “imminent” to describe the Rapture occurring before the Tribulation and the coming of the Antichrist. “We ought to understand thoroughly therefore, my brothers which is imminent or overhanging.”
3. He clearly described the pre-Tribulation Rapture: “Because all saints and the Elect of the Lord are gathered together before the tribulation which is about to come and are taken to the Lord, in order that they may not see at any time the confusion which overwhelms the world because of our sins.”–Grant Jeffrey, “Rapture, Three Fascinating Discoveries”

The writers of those earlier times used the term “pseudo” as merely a literary device in order to not have their names made public for one reason or the other. The same devices are used today in modern literature, of course. And, there are other factors involved in why such pseudonym devices were employed, but that’s not relevant here.

The point is that very meticulous scholarship examining the writers of that ancient period has proven beyond doubt–to me and many others who study Bible prophecy–that there were many students of God’s Word amongst the early believers who held to a pre-Tribulation Rapture of the church.

Yet the blogger calls the writings by Ephraem the Syrian (A.D. 306 to 373) “false witness” and refers to the writer as a “forger.” This he does without actual proof of his charge, but with high-sounding, pseudo-scholarly phraseology, in my opinion.

The danger in all this is that these assaults on the Rapture deflect the study of many of the true children of God who have a desire to look into Bible prophecy these days. Believe me, these seem to constitute a group that is diminishing in number.

The bloggers that are virulently against the truth about the pre-Trib Rapture brought to us by Paul the apostle in his letters to the Thessalonians and the Corinthians, and indeed by Jesus Himself as given in John 14:1-3, send their seemingly well-studied dogma in mass mailings on an ever-increasing basis. People are all too quick to take the sophistry thus delivered, usually unsolicited, as factual. Like those who get their news from cyberspace venues who twist truth that is not news at all, but fable, those marginally interested in Bible prophecy often take the lazy way and choose the blog presentations from the purveyors of anti-pre-Trib Rapture propaganda.

This is a primary reason I wrote my latest book, Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons This Is the Generation That will Be Left Behind. My prayerful desire was and continues to be to get the book into the hands of as many as possible in order to counter such satanically spawned attacks. My special prayer is that we get the book to as many pastors and teachers within churches that are still of the Philadelphian rather than of the Laodicean sort.

My thanks to all who have seen to it that your pastors and teachers now have this book in their possession. For those who haven’t yet seen to it that these ministers of your acquaintance have copies, I ask that you consider providing each a copy.

Time looks to be running out in this Age of Grace. Pray, if you will, that these will begin using their pulpits and teaching opportunities to deliver truth about Christ’s imminent coming for all believers. As chapter 1 of Rapture Ready…Or Not puts it: “The end isn’t near, it’s here.”

My laptop was new, just out of the box. There wasn’t time enough to program it with the things I needed in order to use it before leaving on a trip to San Antonio, Texas. I am, as Dr. J. Vernon McGee used to say, “a back number” when it comes to acumen and literacy. I need all of the assistance I can get in navigating the Net. On top of that, I need JAWS (Jobs Accessible Word System)–a voice synthesis computer program–to tell me what I’m doing on my computer, because I’ve been blind since 1993.

So it was that I didn’t have my anytime-I-want-it Internet access and email available to me while on the trip. This was quite disconcerting, as I am constantly online and using email during the course of any given day. I felt at times imprisoned at the loss of liberty to get into cyberspace any time I wished.

I reflected during those hours without my computer much like we old-timers sometimes get hung up on nostalgia about our days of yesteryear when we didn’t have air conditioning in the hot summers. How in the world did we ever do without those environment-controlling technical wonders? I wouldn’t have to worry about returning to those humidity-filled, sweat-inducing days of yore, I was pretty sure. And, at least I knew I could hang on until I returned to the computer, Internet, email, and the like. My time in lock-up, away from Internet access, was not permanent.

However, an executive order by the president of the United States could, at any moment in the future, end freedom from worry about loss of ability to conduct business through such electronic communications. According to some experts, liberty’s last gleaming, so far as cyberspace is concerned, is as near as the next crisis deemed severe enough to invoke pulling the plug on our Internet availability.

The presidential dictate of Friday, July 6, 2012 gives government unprecedented new authority to take over wired and wireless private communication networks under pretext of national security. The White House edict will permit such national security entities as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Defense, Department of State, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to formulate, implement, and direct policy recommendations and plans for ensuring continuity of government communication capabilities in time of crisis.

The Obama directive authorized the establishment of a National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Committee (NS/EP). Representatives from each of the agencies constitute the crisis-management system for controlling all communications within the nation.

According to the executive order, “The Federal Government must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances to carry out its most critical and time sensitive missions.”

A watchdog group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), issued a statement that said, “The problem with the executive order is that it also grants the DHS new authority to seize private communication facilities when necessary and to effectively shut down or limit civilian communications in a national crisis.”

Amie Stepanovich, associate litigation council at EPIC, said the provision that grants the government such encompassing control over private communications is troubling. She maintains that the complete takeover of private networks for government communications purposes during a crisis could degrade or severely compromise the civilian population’s ability to communicate in an emergency.

Stepanovich said, “This specific authority is something that should have been granted through Congress, rather than through executive order.”

And therein resides the reason for the phrase liberty’s last gleaming for the title of this commentary. This president has taken every opportunity, it seems to me, to dilute American liberty through presidential edict, as opposed to seeking approval through constitutional means. We have watched this process take place time after time, even to the point of foisting Obama Care upon a population that overwhelmingly disapproves of the enslaving legislation–legislation that was found unconstitutional under the guise of which it was congressionally proposed and approved–as a mandate to require the purchase of health insurance.

It took a Supreme Court chief justice to find a surreptitious way to make it constitutional by calling the legislation not a mandate, but a tax, in order to get the forced payment strapped upon the backs of the already national-debt-laden American people.

Another deep gully –that of impending, internet tyranny– materialized in America’s landscape of liberty, caused by the flood of executive orders that are eroding our freedoms. No doubt, the biblically prophesied great world leader that is soon to appear will completely control all communications, ostensibly for purposes of instituting measures that the people of planet earth will believe are the answer to the great crisis of the time.

I’m convinced that the crisis that will be too good for Antichrist to waste will be the crisis created in the wake of the Rapture of the church. But, for believers who go to be with Christ, it will mean true liberty forever.