Monday, January 26, 2015

Other Mid-Trib websites

They are rare, but I've found some.

I've mentioned Nomadic Ministry on this blog before.  I have also now found two other sites.

The Spiritual Solider

Hope To The End

I also found a video on YouTube supporting a form of Mid-Trib Rapture.
Daniel's 70th Week - According to Revelation

All three sites have things I disagree with them on, not just on other eschatology issues but also how to define a Mid-Seventieth Week Rapture.  The Youtube video makes mistakes on Revelation chronology common to Post-Trib and Pre-Wrath.

There is a tendency to confuse Mid-Trib and Pre-Wrath, so I had to pay careful attention to make sure these two sites weren't doing that.

Still, it's important since I believe this view is the correct timing and yet is the least popular that we make an effort to support each others.

Friday, January 23, 2015

Could The Antichrist be American?

Disclaimer: This is NOT in any way me trying to defend the Barack Obama as the Antichrist nonsense.  Quite the contrary what has largely inspired this post is my suspicion that the Antichrist will probably come from the political right (and America is still the most conservative western nation).  That he'll convince many Evangelicals he's one of us, or at least be the kind of politician too many of us tend to be too easily suckered in by.  Obama is horrible, but not in my view Antichrist material.

This post is kind of a follow up to The Lost Tribes and Bible Prophecy.  Which was itself a follow up to earlier posts of this blog.  Thing is, if The Antichrist is the head of a western nation that comes to Israel's aid (being her ally at first but turning on her later) like Chris White and I in different ways suspect.  Right now it seems the United States of America is the by far the most likely nation to do that.  That doesn't prove anything because circumstances could change, but it's worth looking at.

Objections to the idea of The Antichrist being a United States President, or American in anyway, that are actually Biblical, tend to come purely down to passages taken as proving he does come from somewhere else.

I agree with Chris White's arguments against the Assyrian Antichrist. but not with his arguments against a Roman Antichrist.  However America does have a Roman legacy as much as Europe.  I think it's possible that the Little Horn in Daniel 7 isn't just the individual of The Antichrist, but also an 11th Nation.  The U.S. as that 11th Nation could work quite well.

Chris White also insists Daniel 8 proves The Antichrist must come from the region of the nations conquered by Alexander The Great.  But as I've argued elsewhere I believe that connection is genealogical not geographical.  (Though it is interesting the exiled Royal Family of modern Greece is living in New York, the youngest members of it including the current second in line to the throne were born here and thus under the 14th Amendment have American citizenship.  But at this point I see no solid reason to accuse any of them, it seems unlikely any would seek to run for an American political office.)

So I see no solid reason to limit where he could come from.

In terms of the potential relationship to the Hersey that Western Nations are the inheritors of the Northern Kingdom.  Britam (drawing on earlier ideas) affiliates the U.S. with Manasseh and the U.K. with Ephraim.  It's interesting that the Continental United States is divided between east and west by a major river (Mississippi) just as the lands allotted to Manasseh were by the Jordan.

But a stronger thematic connection is that Gideon (the greatest hero of the Tribe of Manasseh) can be compared to George Washington.  Both men after being the military leaders of successful rebellions were offered Kingship but turned it down.  And also both later became symbolically affiliated with a Tree.

It's interesting then to return to the role both White and I feel the false Psalm 83 War belief could play.  Psalm 83 makes an allusion to the narrative of Gideon, which leads to a desire to affiliate that Psalm with a call for a "New Gideon", which plays into the Messiah Ben-Joseph concept quite well.

(Update: I've done another post on the Manasseh connection.)

In the Edom=Rome study I talk about how the Eagle was a major Symbol of Rome and became a major Western Symbol from that.  I also talked about how UnBiblical the idea of the Eagle being linked to Dan is, and pointed to passages linking it to Edom.  There is however one interesting Bible Prophecy that can justify linking the Eagle to the Northern Kingdom.  Micah chapter 1 is a Prophecy mainly against Samaria.  At the end in verse 16 it says.
"Make thee bald, and poll thee for thy delicate children; enlarge thy baldness as the eagle; for they are gone into captivity from thee."
The Eagle as I said has been a symbol of The West for centuries.  But the sub-species known as the Bald Eagle is indigenous to the New World, which is why it was chosen to be a specific symbol of the United States of America.   Yet we have here Samaria being represented as a bald eagle in a time long before Columbus.

So I'm not saying The Antichrist certainly will be American, but I think Believers need to be more open to the possibility that he could be.

Satan I believe has been laying the groundwork for every possible option.  And that American politically conservative Christians tend to marry their Faith and their Patriotism is something I consider a major problem.  I call it Patriotic Idolatry, and definitely a form of the Sin of Pergamos.

And while Evangelicals love to preach against Mormon Hersey, they are very surprisingly willing to jump into bed with Mormons politically, when it comes to "Family Values" and other things.  Mormons meanwhile have their Prophecy of a Rider on a White Horse, who'll become both President of the U.S. and Prophet of the Mormon Church at the same time, and "Save" the Constitution when it "hangs by a thread" by creating a Mormon Theocracy.  Regardless of those concerns Evangelicals got behind Mitt Romney in 2012 and I fear may again in 2016.  The Mormons also in-cooperate seeing America as Manasseh into their doctrine, and have even used the Messiah Ben-Joseph concept in their own weird way.

That rant doesn't mean I think it must be a Mormon who becomes an American Antichrist.  That's just one option.

Back during the period just before and after 2000 there was a popular trend of making many independently produced Christian movies depicting the End Times (almost all with Pre-Trib suppositions), and with them were also books.  These works also reflected this dangerous marrying of faith and patriotism, which I've already complained about.  By having the U.S. be one of the few countries who manages to rebel against The Antichrist.

Two of those films go so far as to feature a President of the United States as a Hero standing up against The Antichrist.

First is Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, (a Sequel to the first movie only in having the same actor as it's Antichrist).  That movie even makes it's hero the Antichrist's brother.  Somehow one brother becomes President of the E.U. and the other President of the U.S.

In Left Behind: World At War (based on left over plot-lines of the second book), the President is African American, which I give them credit for.  But also this time he does in fact die in his battle with The Antichrist.

Reason this is significant is that I think there will be a decoy Antichrist (maybe more then one) who will have an adversarial relationship with the real one.  He's The Terrible of The Nations in Ezekiel.  And I argued in my Four Horseman study that I think this individual could be who gives The Antichrist his mortal wound.

I know these authors might hate to think their own works may unwittingly help The Antichrist.  But I'm afraid that may very well happen.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

I still support the Southern Conjecture

I have a post where I originally explained my support for the Southern Conjecture/Al-Kas Fountain view.  And then another one where I deal with one particular objection to it's Escatological significance.

Latter I did a post in response to some new information I learned where I considered changing to the Gihon Spring view of The Temple's location.  That post was made and revised as my mind was being pretty chaotic on the subject and it still seemed clear I wasn't really gonna do that.  All the reasons for  rejecting that view I hold now are explained there, or in links provided there.

So I am just making this post to clarify.  I believe the Temple was where the Al-Kas fountain is.  But the Gihon Spring is interesting and I think probably the Location of the Tabernacle of David.