This is a very good article! We will do well to keep this truth -taken from it- in the forefront of our minds when approaching all things political and social –
While Jesus was born into a politically-charged environment, He would not enter the political arena or reduce His message to something that could be identified with a political party. The New Testament restricts its comments on political activity to understanding the prophetic significance of such events and to pray for those in authority lest they be influenced by things more sinister.
For how many leaders have we voted for thinking more of them than we should, how many ministers, evangelists and prophets also, all proving to be something opposite from what they spoke? How many more times will we be taken in this same way?
Lots of good information here – 🙂
“The Theology of Disillusionment”
by James Jacob Prasch
In the aftermath of the Hasmonean Period in the century before the birth of Jesus, Israel quickly degenerated from the spiritual revival of the Maccabees and the national resurgence that followed to causing itself to being sucked in to a bad deal that had tremendous religious and political ramifications. Her own leaders entered into a treaty, trusting people who should never have been trusted because they looked to man instead of to God. Part of their motives were economic and strategic in terms of their national security. There were also elements of cultural leanings towards Rome as their had been towards Greece before the Maccabees. At the time of the Roman triumvirate, the Roman general Pompei arrived from Rome offering Israel the protection of the Roman Empire and economic advantage. The spiritual corruption of the Levitical priesthood, and what emerged as the Sanhedrin, predisposed the national leadership to enter into a concordant not ordained of God. At one point the High Priest, John Huricanus, had himself proclaimed king, violating the Scriptural prohibition that a king must be a descendant of David from the tribe of Judah while the High Priest had to be a descendant of Aaron from the tribe of Levi. The Levitical priesthood became a political monarchy in a union of what in modern terms we would call “church and state”, that God’s Word prohibited even in the Old Testament. As Rome’s sphere of power blossomed and new potential threats bloomed, Israel’s leaders, both religious and political, with popular backing of much of the public, pressed for the protection of Rome. Plainly, Israel had forgotten the lessons of Isaiah 30-31 during the reign of Hezekiah when God castigated those pressing Judah to seek protection against Assyria from Egypt.
No sooner had Israel agreed to become a protectorate when Pompei entered the holy city of Jerusalem and marched into the Temple, trespassing into the Holy of Holies. When anyone other than the High Priest on the Day of Atonement (”Yom Kippur“) entered the Holy of Holies, it is a type of the Antichrist (Daniel 9:27; Daniel 11:31; Matthew 24:15; Mark 13:14; Luke 21:20; 2 Thessalonians 2:4). Israel feared another Antiochus Epiphanes from whom the Maccabees led their liberation from, defiling God’s Temple, so they looked to Rome. Instead Rome defiled it to their national shock and dismay. They had not only been betrayed by Rome, but by their religious and national leaders. Ultimately, however, in actual fact the majority of people betrayed themselves. The very thing they tried to prevent with their own devices they foolishly caused to happen.
Not only was the Temple defiled by Pompei, but instead of being a protectorate they found themselves a Roman colony governed by mad emperors from abroad and by Roman surrogates locally. This period saw the rise of two major types of the Antichrist: one was Caesar Augustus (formally the General Octavius of the Battle of Actium), and the other Herod the Great. While other emperors had been deified posthumously by the Roman senate, Caesar Augustus, who was emperor when Christ was born, was proclaimed to be a god in his lifetime. And with his census recorded in the nativity narrative of Luke’s Gospel, assigned numbers to people when Christ came the firs time in order to maintain economic control of most of the known world. Herod the Great was a Nabatean of Idumean ethnicity who was culturally Roman but who had embraced Judaism for political purposes much like all Texas politicians are “born again” at election time in the modern world, or as all unionist politicians are good Protestants at election time in Northern Ireland, or as all Irish or Italian politicians are good Catholics when they are running for office in Boston or Chicago.
Herod personifies the beast of Daniel that reappears in Revelation 12 trying to kill the baby coming out of the woman, and when the baby is raptured in the divine rescue kills the rest of her offspring. (Rev. 12:1-5, 17) Pompei, Caesar Augustus, and Herod were one Antichrist after another, much as their will be many Antichrists before the ultimate Antichrist and Jesus’ coming again. There will be another Pompei who will enter the Holy of Holies in the character of Antiochus IV. There will be another Caesar Augustus who will number people to maintain full financial and economic control. (Rev. 13) And as Revelation 12 tells us, there will be another Herod. These are complex typologies that will be explored in greater depth in our forthcoming book on the Antichrist. However, the message and pattern is clear.
By Jesus’ day there was a Temple to Caesar Augustus at Caesarea Philippi on the ruins of the ancient temple of Pan where Jesus gave His declaration of Himself being the Rock in Matthew 16. This was on the lower ridge of Mt. Hermon towering over Galilee below. In Jerusalem the Fortress Antonio overshadowed the Temple and Temple Mount itself with its eagles, symbols not only of Pagan Rome but Pagan Rome’s dominion over the house of God eclipsing the heart and soul of the people of God and their identity as a nation in a covenant relationship with the One True God. It was quite a mess, but in the final analysis it was largely a mess of their own making.
It is of little surprise that on February 1, 2010 Prime Minister Berlusconni of Italy arrived in Jerusalem. Breaking with the left-wing socialists who dominate the European Union, Mr. Berlusconni, despite being immersed in a series of financial and political scandals, remains an outspoken friend of the USA, a critic of Islamic culture and civilization (which he has compared to Communism as a deficient entity that must be defeated and that will fall in the squalor of its own depravity) and has consistently been a vocal supporter of Israel. Upon arrival in Jerusalem Mr. Berlusconni announced his plans to push for Israel membership into the European Union. Meanwhile the Vatican in Rome remains consistent in posturing itself to play a role in brokering a Middle East peace based on some kind of internationalization of Jerusalem in a climate where the pope seeks to regain the cloak he inherited from the Pagan emperors of Rome as Pontiff.
As we have explained multiple times in our recorded material, the emperors bore the religious title of “Pontificus Maximus” (the Great Bridge Builder between and among faiths) as head of Rome’s Pantheon; again in a marriage of church and state. A political figure wants to draw Israel into a revived Roman Empire while a religious one wants to be the bridge between Judaism, Christendom, and Islam. To those who understand Scripture and understand history in light of Scripture, the prophetic implications of these events are evident. At the very least they demonstrate a trend that is plainly of eschatological consequence. The prophet Daniel tells us that the Antichrist (akin to Pompei) will deceive Israel into making a treaty, break it, and betray them, leaving them not merely disillusioned, but devastated.
America and Israel have labored for decades to shift a normally pro-Arab Europe towards one more favorable to Israel at a time when grass root reactions to growing Islamic radicalism are mounting in Britain and Holland, and incipiently in Italy, Germany, and France. Meanwhile the Israeli left of the Labor Party coalition are dominated by socialists such as Simon Peres and other members of Socialist International who are natural bedfellows to the socialist eurocracy of Brussels and the so-called quartet mediary Tony Blair who is a member of the Bilderbergers and who converted to Roman Catholicism without gravitating into the fanciful speculations of conspiracy theorists.
It is obvious the stage is being set for something to happen that will not be simply politically transforming, but theologically stupendous. When and how this will happen we can only speculate, and again it is imperative that we avoid the wild conjectures of lunatic fringe conspiracy theorists, including those who combine conspiracy theories with their particular interpretations of End Times prophecy. What is also imperative, however, is that we recognize that these events are indeed lining up with End Times prophecy. As always the early trends are brought, but at some point they become specific and defined. Betrayal is once again on the horizon. As in the past, it arrives from Rome. As in the past, it is self-afflicted. As in the past, it fulfills the prophecies of Daniel. And as in the past, those people whose hearts and minds are truly the Lord’s, and these alone, will understand. (Daniel 11:33; Daniel 12:3)
To spiritually discern the politics of betrayal, one must understand the theology of betrayal. Whenever a nation or a people, no matter how strong its biblical heritage, stops looking to the living God and looks to man for salvation, they are doomed and they bring the doom on themselves. This is foremost true of God’s own covenant people Israel, but this principle co-equally applies to the Christian church; as the Apostle Paul wrote us, “If God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you“. (Romans 11:21)
Israel’s closest thing to a true friend has been the United States. And this is without doubt one reason God’s judgment has not already fallen on America. (Genesis 12:3) Yet the theology of politics and betrayal abound no less in the USA as they do in Israel and Europe.
Naive Christians heralded Ronald Reagan as a pro-life brother in Christ. In a colossal act of betrayal Reagan appointed pro-abortion judge Sanda Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. It was O’Connor, a Reagan Republican, who wrote both the Supreme Court’s decision on outlawing the Texas anti-sodomy law which opened the door for states to move towards same-sex marriage with co-equal adoption rights for homosexuals and lesbians to raise up a child to be a homosexual or lesbian, and also authored the decision ordering the Ten Commandments out of the judicial building in Alabama. It was Dwight Eisenhower’s Republican Supreme Court of Earl Warren who ordered God out of the classroom. It was Richard Nixon’s Republican Supreme Court of Warren Burger who ordered God out of the maternity ward with Roe v. Wade. It was Ronald Reagan’s pro-abortion Supreme Court appointee who ordered God out of the courtroom. All the while, naive and undiscerning Christians have swallowed the lie that the Republican Party is more “Christian” than the Democrat Party, when in fact the record proves that it was Republicans who ordered God out of the classroom, the maternity ward, and the court demonstrating categorically and without mitigation that a Republican politician is everything that a Democratic politician is plus a liar on top if it. These are the simple and undeniable facts of history.
It was George W. Bush who first celebrated Ramadan at the White House. The Epistle of 1 John that which denies the Father and Son relationship is by scriptural definition “Antichrist”. Yet George W. Bush placed a copy of the Koran, which states that God has no Son, in the White House in order to honor Islam after September 11th as he continued the express visa program for Saudi Arabians who outlaw the New Testament from even being brought into their country. Somehow one cannot imagine Winston Churchill putting a copy of Mein Kampf in 10 Downing Street after Hilter’s Luftwaffe leveled Coventry and half of Liverpool and London, nor can one imagine even an FDR issuing visas to Japanese Kamikaze pilots after Pearl Harbor. Yet many Evangelical clergymen have lined up in election after election to endorse one Republican candidate after another.
As we speak, Senator Scott Brown, who sensationally won Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusettes, announced that while he opposed federal funding for abortions, he believes in the right to abort a baby in circumstances where there is no clinical warrant as has the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois.
While Jesus was born into a politically-charged environment, He would not enter the political arena or reduce His message to something that could be identified with a political party. The New Testament restricts its comments on political activity to understanding the prophetic significance of such events and to pray for those in authority lest they be influenced by things more sinister.
On the left, liberal clergy such as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Jeremiah Wright, and some would say Rick Warren, endorse Democratic candidates the same as the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson endorsed Republicans. This replays the state of Israel in the early 1st Century in terms of corruption of the clergy who misled the people.
Jerry Falwell accepted millions of dollars in contributions from Korean cult leader Sun Yung Moon, who claimed to be the return of Christ in the flesh. Pat Robertson, who has given multiple false prophecies in God’s name, promoted the Toronto Experience and signed Evangelicals and Catholics together, also began a broadcasting ministry of contributions of Christians to preach the Gospel. He and his son then sold it to Rupert Murdoch and pocketed the money to the tune of nearly $1 billion. Jeremiah Wright, the mentor of Barrack Obama preached, “God damn America”, delivered racists pronouncements against white people from the pulpit, and invited Louis Farrakan, a racist Muslim who claims to ride in flying saucers, to preach at his church, which Barrack Obama supported for years with $500 a week tax deductible donations. It was interesting that Obama, on a visit to San Francisco, denounced hunters in Pennsylvania for clinging to their constitutional right to bear arms and to their faith when Obama’s own declared faith is a church where they preach “God damn” the same country of which he wished to be President.
The hypocrisy of politicians is eclipsed only by the hypocrisy of corrupt clergy just the same as we read in the Passion Narratives in the Gospels. Raising millions from corporations and foundations to help disenfranchised urban blacks with his Rainbow Coalition, Baptist minister Jesse Jackson paid a salubrious salary to the mother of a child he adulterously fathered out of wedlock to keep her quiet. In the 1940’s before the era of civil rights and Martin Luther King, when injustices against blacks were easily ten times worse than anything that exists today (particularly in the South), fewer than one in ten black children were born out of wedlock. Today seven out of ten are born out of wedlock. What chance do such poor children have with no father figure? And what chance does black America have when their leader is one of such absent fathers who, moreover, takes money contributed to help poor blacks in order to treat the mother of his love-child as a rich one to buy her silence?
We are again back to the debauchery of the religious system of Second Temple Period Judaism. Call it the “Sanhedrin” or the “World Council of Churches”, call them the “religious right” and the “religious left”, or call them “Pharisees” and “Saduccees”. Today, just as in biblical times, they are six of one and a half dozen of the other. Things have not changed much either in Israel or anywhere in the Judeo-Christian world. The legacy of hypocrisy endures, perpetuated by the lowest form of political slime and beatified by the lowest forms of theocratic scum. That is what it was like in the time of Jesus, and that is precisely what it is like today. How long Christ will tarry we cannot say, and how long His judgment will tarry we cannot say, but they will not tarry forever, of this we may be sure.
Disillusionment and betrayal are pan-historical. Barrack Obama debated Hillary Clinton and promised his supporters “Change” from what things had been under the Bushes and Clintons. Among his first acts after being elected to the presidency was to appoint a Clinton as Secretary of State and to reappoint Bush’s Secretary of Defense after running against the very foreign and defense policies advocated by both Clinton and Bush. The only thing Barrack Obama changed was his socks.
Obama was the lawyer for Acorn that pushed more than any other for sub-prime lending as a “civil right” for minorities. And his Chief of Staff, Rob Immanuel, earned $16 million in the Fanny-Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage fiasco that triggered the present economic crisis. Obama himself received more campaign contributions from Fanny and Freddie than any other member of the Senate except for Chris Dodd, who chaired the committee that exercise oversight over these institutions. It was his fellow Democrat, homosexual Barny Frank, who had a homosexual lover on the board of these institutions, who used his position as Banking Committee chairman to block the caveats being issued of the coming collapse. Sub-prime lending was the brainchild of Jimmy Carter and the darling of the Clintons who expanded it even more than it was of Bush. Yet Obama blames the previous administration for the mess he inherited, when in fact it was a mess he and the members of his administration such as Geithner and Immanuel largely created and profited from. It is little wonder that upon coming to office, he frantically wrote welfare checks for banks allowing them to increase their profits wildly, borrowing money at zero percent interest and lending it out at rates of 5%-8% paying handsome bonuses to kingpins of the banking establishment from where he recruited most of his key staff and cabinet members responsible for economic policy and financial regulation. His left-wing supporters were left stunned.
Obama repeatedly promised that all proposed legislation would be posted on the White House website five days before any vote by Congress. Instead he delivered a 1,300 page intricate and confusing tripling of the national debt to members of the House and Senate at 11 PM the night before the vote demanding it be passed to be sure that unemployment would remain under 8%. Unemployment is now above 10% and in real terms closer to 18%. It was Reagan who tripled the national deficit, then it was George W. Bush who tripled it again. Now Obama has tripled that, threatening the viability of the dollar the future economic sovereignty of the United States.
Many in the business community who supported him like Warren Buffet feel betrayed while one independent economist after another has come to the realization that Obama is an economic madman bent on pistol suicide. The solvency of the government, and a potential run on the dollar, plus a downgrade in the rating of federal adventures have become terrifying prospects under the presidency of someone who is plainly inept, inexperienced, unqualified, and utterly disposed to tell lie after lie. He promised his supporters that he would appoint no lobbyists to positions in his administration, yet he has appointed six including Attorney General Eric Holder.
Editorialists are openly saying that Obama has already become a lame duck whose popularity has declined faster than any other President in modern history. Baring unforeseen events, he is likely to be the next Jimmy Carter, a one-term loser fire from office by the electorate as an incompetent and also to be the next George W. Bush who will leave office without a legacy.
What is important about this for Christians is not the policies or the politics itself, but the manner in which Obama reached a Messianic stature, even being called a political “messiah” by the biased left-wing media. Many Evangelicals overlooked his position on partial-birth abortion and his advocacy of homosexuality and lesbianism to the point of holding gay and lesbian pride picnics on the White House lawn. From Christians in so-called “Emergent” and “Purpose Driven” churches who placed temporal concerns regarding the environment and opinions about social justice on the front-burner and moral issues such as abortion and homosexuality on the back, to Afro-American Pentecostals and Baptists, many Evangelicals were swept up in Obama fever, looking for a political messiah to save America and to save the planet.
Just as Bush and Reagan misled the religious right and left professing Evangelicals disillusioned, those Christians and others who looked to Obama for change are likewise left disillusioned, confused, and arriving at the daunting realization that they have been lied to and betrayed. Once again, however, it is easy to blame politicians who are deceivers by nature and who know how to manipulate with their eloquence and subtlety of the cleverly manufactured lies they fabricate. In the end however, the truth of the matter is the delusion they suffer is one they suffer because they deluded themselves.
Israel is self-deluded, always looking for any Messiah but the true one, from Bar Kochba to Sabbatai Tsvi to Jacob Frank to Menachem Schneerson. They will cheer any messiah except the genuine Messiah Yeshuah. So too the post-Christian, neo-Pagan Protestant world will celebrate the ascendancy of any political messiah to rescue them from their own devices now that they have rejected the True Messiah who can rescue them from their sins.
This ancient disillusionment that always arises from the advent of false messiahs following the rejection of the true one is but a cartoon before the movie. The worst is yet to come. For years we have warned if people cannot see through an obvious false prophet like Pat Robertson, Todd Bentley, or Benny Hinn, there is no way they will see through the False Prophet of Revelation 13.
We must realize that the frenzy generated by Adolph Hitler and Ayatollah Komeini was something that the peoples of Germany and Iran could not see until it was too late. This is the same spirit that propelled Israel to welcome Pompei, and it is the same spirit that propelled America to follow Obama. It always ends in disillusionment and betrayal. For the spirit in back of such phenomena is the spirit of Antichrist. If Germany, a cultural capital of continental Europe at the time could not rightly discern what Hitler was until it was too late and he brought them to destruction, or Italy, the nation of DaVinci, Michaelangelo, and Dante could not discern what Mussolini was until it was too late, and if America, the last remaining super power, could not discern what Obama is, how will they not follow the Beast to come? Satan always manifests himself as Lucifer, an angel of light. So does everyone controlled by the spirit of Antichrist, be it a pope, a Pompei, or an Obama. How easily Israel was deceived. How easily also is the Christian church deceived. Let us, by the grace of God, not be deceived.
With eyes towards heaven, let us remain fixated on the real Christ, that we will not be connived by a false one. Let us not look to Rick Warren’s counterfeit peace plan, but let us rather look to the Prince of Peace. Let us not be captivated by the spirit of Antichrist operating in both the religious and political realm, but let us be filled with the Holy Spirit of Jesus who prepares us for His coming.
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