Resisting the Antichrist
Resisting the Antichrist
"Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour...But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is the man who denies (refuses "(1 John 2.18-23)
"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4.7)
"Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith..." (1 Peter 5.8-9)
An antichrist is the spirit of satan, when it inhabits human beings who are willing to serve the devil's plans to oppose, overthrow and replace Jesus Christ's government of the world.
"Don't let anyone deceive you in any way for that day (of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ) will not come until the rebellion (stepping away from to stand against) occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple (Holy of Holies), proclaiming himself to be God...The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders." (2 Thessalonians 2.3-12)
It is most starkly exposed and identified through its murderous hatred of the Jews, just because they are Jewish. It knows (probably better than most of the Church) that the locus of Christ the King's reign over the earth will be a physically and spiritually resurrected Kingdom of Israel.
"Son of man, these bones are the whole House of Israel...O My People, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them...I will put My Spirit in you and you will live...My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd...I will put My sanctuary among them forever." (Ezekiel 37)
This entity has ever sought nothing less than the utter and complete extermination of God's Jewish People in their entirety! Thus are we to understand such malevolents of history as the Pharaoh of Exodus 1, Haman the Agagite in Esther's story, King Herod of Judea (Matthew 2 and Luke 1)...and in our own days, Adolf Hitler.
(British historian and Oxford University Fellow, Sir Martin Gilbert has written, "The annihilation of the Jews and of Judaism was a main objective of Hitler and his regime.")
These were each in their own time an antichrist. But immediately before Christ Himself returns to reign, the antichrist will come and seek to establish his quasi-throne, with all the ferocity of his last-chance. The Church will then be summoned to resist him - not so much for its own sake -but in order to be the sole line of defence between his murderous intent and God's Jewish People.
The devil's insane equation is, "No Jews...No Kingdom of Israel...no King of Israel...no Kingdom of God on earth."
As the eminent Jewish prophet, Art Katz (1929-2007) has said repeatedly and unequivocally, "There is a holocaust coming that will eclipse the Nazi time, because it will not be confined to Europe, but be global.
"Unless there is a Church that will extend itself for Jews in their 'time of Jacob's trouble', in the time of fierce opposition and threat to their lives...not one will survive.
"You have to invest yourself, and be willing to make your life count for the Kingdom of God, anticipating the coming of the King. The one investing himself knows that the King will not come except Israel first be restored. He knows that Israel will not be restored without first going through its last time of anguish and chastening.
"He knows," Art concludes, "that it is going to come even to our own backyard in our out-of-the-way places. He knows that it is going to require from us a mercy and a willingness to extend ourselves sacrificially, taking the risk even of death."
"They overcame him (that ancient serpent) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." (Revelation 12.11)
In our own day we have witnessed perhaps the most extreme and savage antichrist to date...Adolf Hitler and his "Final Solution". On May 7, 1945, WW2 in Europe came to an end...and the Holocaust was over. 6 million European Jews were dead; a million and a half were children.
A Jew who had been in the Warsaw ghetto later wrote, "Hundreds of thousands of children...were lost in the gas chambers when they were torn away from their parents. If you have a pathological imagination you may be able to picture this yourself, but if you are a normal person you will never be able to bring this chapter of horrors to life in spite of all your imaginings."
History in Germany during the first half of the 20th Century is presently prophesying to the Church. God help us all - especially Israel - if we refuse or fail to hearken. A nation which had been the cradle of the Protestant Reformation, and home to such cultural icons and luminaries as Beethoven, Durer, Hegel and Goethe...was conquered by an antichrist!
"He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." (Revelation 2.7)
It was no accident that Hitler, early in his political career, had predicted that upon attaining power he would build multiple gallows on the main street of Munich..."as many as traffic will allow". He bragged that there "the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink!"
The evil spirit which spoke through him, was the same that "inspired" Haman the Agagite.
"Having learned who Mordecai's people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai's people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes...His wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, 'Have a gallows built, seventy-five feet high, and ask the king in the morning to have Mordecai hanged on it.' This suggestion delighted Haman, and he had the gallows built." (Esther 3.5-6 and 5.14)
Nor was it a coincidence that the Nazis boasted of creating an empire that would last for 1000 years. What provoked that? satanic jealously surely, of the true reality promised by God Himself,
"Blessed and holy are those who have a part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years.' (Revelation 20.6)
One of the leaders of Christian resistance to Hitler, was the Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth (1886-1968). He was teaching theology at the University of Bonn when Hitler seized power in 1933. Barth was in no doubt about the despot's identity,
"Right from its roots (National Socialism) was anti-semitic...in this movement it was realised with a simple demonic clarity, that the enemy is the Jew. Yes, the enemy in this matter had to be a Jew."
From May 29-31, 1934, Christians who opposed Hitler met in Barmen to "withstand in faith and unanimity, the destruction of the Confession of Faith (by the Nazis and their 'German Christian' followers), and thus the Evangelical Church in Germany".
This assembly produced a document called the "Theological Declaration of Barmen", and Karl Barth was instrumental in its formulation. He mailed a copy to Hitler, and was then driven from his university post in 1935.
It was Barth who later wrote, "To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world."
There can be no doubt that the Barmen Declaration was prophetic at the time of its being framed. But it is surely even more so today, proclaiming as it does God's firm foundations on which Believers will have to stand four-square if they are going to resist that one whose ancient and yet future goal is to oppose, usurp and replace Israel's King.
"But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth." (1 John 2.20)
Of these foundations stones, I highlight the following:
1) "Jesus Christ, as He is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.
"We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamations, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God's revelation."
(John 14.6 and John 10.1&9)
2) "We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords...areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through Him."
(1 Corinthians 1.30)
3) "The Christian Church is the congregation of the brethren in which Jesus Christ acts presently as the Lord in Word and Sacrament through the Holy Spirit...it is solely His property, and that it lives and wants to live solely from His comfort and from His direction in the expectation of His appearance.
"We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions."
(Ephesians 4.15-16)
4) "The various offices of the Church do not establish a dominion of some over the others; on the contrary, they are for the exercise of the ministry entrusted to and enjoined upon the whole congregation."
(Matthew 20.25-26)
5) "We reject the false doctrine, as though the State, over and above its special commission, should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the Church's vocation as well."
(1 Peter 2.17)
6) "We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes and plans."
(Matthew 28.20 and 2 Timothy 2.9)
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FOOTNOTE A quote from Thomas Merton (1915-1968); a Trappist hermit at Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky, and perhaps the 20th C's most influential mystical theologian.
"I am more and more convinced that Romans 9-11 (the chapters on the election of Israel) are the key to everything today. This is the point where we have to look, and press, and search, and listen to the Word. For here we enter the understanding of Scripture, the wholeness of revelation and of the Church.
"So we must look harder and further into this mystery. A 'contemplation' that is wide of this is simply a waste of time, vanity and vexation of spirit." (4/11/1964)
