Babel Rising!

Jesus REALLY is coming soon!!!

There are many good, valid reasons to believe it. Actually, there are so many reasons to believe it that it would be impossible to discuss them all here. However, a few are worth mentioning.

1. The length of time since the First Coming: It has now been about 2000 years since Christianity began. By Bible chronology, it was about 2000 years from Adam to Abraham, and about another 2000 years from Abraham to Jesus Christ. So it is logical to expect a major act of God in our time.
2. The threat of atomic war: Many Christians have seen the fulfillment of passages of Scripture that prophesy sudden destruction in the threat nuclear holocaust.
   

There is a problem: Although there is still a significant group of Christians who really believe in the Second Coming, they are a minority as far as the whole Christian world is concerned. In some churches today, the subject is never mentioned. In other churches, lip service is given to the idea, but the Second Coming is not part of the mainstream of the preaching and teaching. The goal of the teaching and preaching of most modern ministries is having a better quality of life in the here and now.

Special Note: There has been a sudden upsurge of interest in the Second Coming since the attacks of September 11, 2001. It is likely, however, that if the war on terrorism proves generally successful, as it now appears that it will be, this will be a passing thing.

There are valid reasons for the decline. One is that Christians, especially older ones, may just be tired of all the hype about the Second Coming. There is also the matter of all the disagreement about Prophecy. There is probably no other area of Christian thought in which there have been so many contradictory ideas preached and published. Last but not least is the fact that so many people have tried to set the date for the Second Coming, only to be proven wrong by history.

Furthermore, the unsaved world is not at all unaware of this, and it happens to be a very bad testimony.

Yet there are reasons to believe that Jesus really will come soon that are not part of what is normally considered Second Coming Prophecy.

These reasons are based on the answer to a question, that, again, may not seem to have anything to do with Prophecy: Why did God confuse the languages at the Tower of Babel? The answer is not what most Christians think. Nor have most Christians seen the implications the story (Genesis 11:1-9) has for our times.

The answers usually given have little to do with what the Bible really says. The people of Babel were not trying to reach heaven and take over from God. If that had been their purpose, it would have been an exercise in futility and God would not have had to do anything about it. Neither was the Tower a spaceship, as has been recently claimed. The Bible plainly says it was built with bricks. You don’t build spaceships with bricks.

Also, the Bible emphasizes the city, not the Tower. It is human tradition that emphasizes the Tower. The city is mentioned three times in the story, the Tower only twice. So why did they build the city and the Tower?

The Bible really says, in Genesis 11:4, that the people of Babel wanted to make a name for themselves and keep themselves together. The reason, as they stated it, was this; “let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth”.

The city and the Tower would have been the common achievement that would have given them an identity and thus would have preserved their unity. The people of Babel wanted to stay together. God wanted them to spread out. Why?

God Himself answers this question in Genesis11:6; “The people are all one, and they have all one language, and this they begin to do; now nothing they imagine to do will be withheld from them.” This is one of the most significant things that God says about the human race in the entire Bible. It is equal in importance with Genesis 1:26 & 27, which tells us that we are created in the image of God, and Romans 3:23, which tells us that we are all sinners. It is amazing that this has been so greatly overlooked by students of the Word.

This statement is related to two well known modern proverbs. The first comes from the New Age Movement: “What mind can conceive, Man can achieve”. This says, in essence, that if we can imagine something, we can do it. For example, ideas like e-mail and the Internet were around in the early 1950’s. The ideas were there but the technology was not, yet in time, the technology came. The second comes from America’s NASA Space Program: “The difficult we do immediately; The impossible may take a little longer”. This says that in the final analysis, there is nothing that is really impossible to us.

God said, in Genesis 11:6, that these modern proverbs are true, given three conditions that are implied in His statement:We must have”¦

1. Unity; from “The people are all one”.
2. Unlimited Communication; from “they all have one language”.

Enough time; from “this they begin to do”, and the fact that He intervened right away.

God said that given these three conditions, there is nothing in the material sense that we cannot do. The first two conditions were present at Babel. God saw real danger in that situation, and he did not give them enough time. He also took away the other two conditions when He confused the languages.

The Tower was not the problem. If the Tower had been the problem, God would have destroyed it. You will notice that He did not. The problem was the creative potential that humans have when they act in unity. So God moved against the human potential. Again, we have to ask; why?

We are created in the image of God. This is one of the most basic beliefs of the Christian Faith. ‘And God said, “Let us make man in Our image”¦” (Genesis 1:26). As has been said by others, we are created in God’s image. God is the Creator. Therefore we are creative. It is in our creativity and in our ability to communicate that we most differ from ordinary animals and most resemble God.

We live in a world in which we are so immersed in the products of our creativity that we usually are not conscious of how awesome a thing it is, compared to what even the smartest animals can do. Gorillas are supposed to be nearly as smart as we are. In fact, a few have been taught to speak in sign language and can have simple conversations with humans. But we taught them to do it, and they are not creative at all. Some people claim that dolphins are smarter than we are, but they can’t even communicate in sign language, and again, they are not creative at all. No mere animal writes books. No animal does math. No animal draws real pictures. No animal makes machines. Only humans do these things.

When I wrote this article, I took my ideas and turned them into a string of tiny symbols. You are looking at those symbols and turning them back into my ideas. No mere animal can do anything that even approaches these things. The computer that I used to write it is a product of our creativity. The publication is an example of our ability to communicate.

There is only one word that truly describes the difference between ourselves and even the smartest animals, in our creativity and our ability to communicate. That word is”¦Infinite! In fact, the difference is concrete evidence that we are in fact created in the image of God, which is not true of any ordinary animal. In creating us, God was producing a race of beings like Himself.

There is more to this than has been generally recognized. The Scriptures imply that the human race is created in God’s image collectively, if anything, more than individually. In Genesis 1:26 & 27, the words “man”, “him”, and “them” all refer to the whole human race, not just Adam. Looking at the issue from a different perspective, the name Adam, as in Genesis 5:1 & 2, can refer to the whole human race. This may be a new idea to some, but there is more reason from both the Scriptures and the world around us to believe it.

Biblically, we were created in the image of God collectively because we were originally created to be the Body of Christ. If Adam and Eve had not sinned, they and their offspring would have eventually become the Body, even as the redeemed are part of the Body.

Again, there is evidence of this from the world around us. It is the fact that human creativity multiplies when we act in unity. One person, without tools and parts provided by others, probably could not build a bicycle. Humans working together for the purposes can build huge jet planes like the Boeing 747. One person working by himself might put a small bridge of stones and logs across a stream. Humans working together build enormous suspension bridges like the Golden Gate. There are many other examples of this pattern that can be cited.

It is when humans act in unity that our creativity becomes truly impressive”¦and dangerous! Like what happened on September 11, 2001. When unsaved people have unity, their potential for serious evil also increases. The serious evil happens.

God confused the languages at Babel to disrupt human unity and thus limit human creativity, and the evil that can result from it. This is the only logical conclusion that follows from what God said. This has worked for a long time, over four thousand years, but now”¦

A new Tower of Babel is rising. Unlike the first one, that was built with bricks and asphalt, and simply meant to be very high, this one is being built with science, medicine, and high technology. And this one is literally reaching for the stars.

We are overcoming what God did at Babel. We have so much communication going on worldwide that we have a situation that has been called “the information glut”. We can not only talk to people anywhere in the world by telephone, we can send faxes to scores of people at the same time. E-mails can be sent simultaneously to tens of thousands. Satellites are eliminating the need for miles of cable to do these things. Computers and the Internet make it possible to post information where anyone who wants it can access it anytime, anywhere. Wireless phones and Internet devices mean you don’t have to be in any particular place to contact anyone else, and neither does the person you want to contact. Software exists that can automatically translate documents, and even speech, to other languages, mechanically overcoming the language barrier.

Human unity is increasing. The United Nations is becoming increasingly powerful, and is starting to look like a world government. Globalization of culture and economy results in more ties between nations and less likelihood of a major war. Organizations like NATO and the EEU are also suppressing the possibility of a major war.They pose a united threat to aggressors and troublemakers like the Taliban and the Al Qaeda. At the same time, the Euro is tying nations together financially. The Ecumenical Movement and other related movements are trying to tie mankind together in a one-world religion. In science and technology, the Freedom Space Station is being built and operated by nations that were threatening each other with nuclear annihilation not many years ago.

We also have two universal languages: mathematics and binary code. A student learning math will learn the same things whether he learns in Toronto or Timbuktu, in Manchester or Manchuria. Much of the serious communication done relevant to business, science and government takes place in the realm of mathematics, with the transference and analysis of enormous quantities of numerical data. Binary code is the machine language that all computers and digital equipment use to store, process and transmit data. Binary code is one of the principle things that makes the Internet possible.

There happens to be a major spiritual problem with all this. The Bible tells us, in Genesis 6:5 and 8:21, that our creativity is corrupted with sin. The Hebrew word translated “every intent”, or “every imagination”, depending on the translation, is a blanket term for everything that we think of, and by logical extension, everything we create. The statement is made before and after the Flood, presumably to make it clear that the Flood didn’t change anything.Therefore, everything we create is to some extent evil, as surely as “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God”. That is why we have problems like nuclear and biological weapons and environmental pollution, but these things are, as the saying goes, “just the tip of the iceberg”.

Because of these things, when we act in unity, our corrupt creativity can become a problem to God. We have the potential to interfere with His plan of salvation for mankind. There is reason to believe that if God had not confused the languages at Babel, the collective creativity and sinfulness of the people at Babel would have prevented Him from ever bringing salvation to mankind.

Through our collective, corrupt creativity, we are moving toward the violation of what I call “The Three Prohibitions”. These are three things that the Bible shows that God will not allow us to do – at least not for long – prior to the Second Coming of Christ. He will not allow us to do these things because of their potential to interfere with His plan of salvation.

The Three Prohibitions are:

1. Our having unity and unlimited communication apart from His Lordship. We are already in a state of increasing violation of this.
2. Our giving ourselves significantly longer life spans or physical eternal life.
3. Our traveling into space and establishing permanent human residence on other worlds.

We are working on violating the latter two prohibitions with increasing unity and ease of communication. Yet it is in violating them that we could really interfere with God’s plan. Again, we are already violating the First Prohibition. In communication we have already effectively overridden what God did at Babel. Few Christians are aware of how much unity there is in the fields relevant to the latter two. This will certainly produce results, given enough time.

The Second Prohibition is based on the fact that God has set limits on how long we can live. In Genesis 3:22-24, God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden so that they could not eat the fruit of the Tree of Life and live forever. Then, in Genesis 6:3 and Psalm 90:10, God pronounced two shortenings of the human life span. The second one put us where we are now. We should wonder why.

Like it or not, the Bible tells us that we have to die to go to heaven. I Corinthians 15:50 says that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”. Hebrews 9:27 says that “It is appointed to men once to die, but after that the judgment”. There is a concrete possibility that fallen humans with physical eternal life would be lost beyond all hope of salvation. God, in His mercy, will not allow it to happen.

There is also reason to believe that when people’s life spans are extended, their potential for evil increases. The people before the Flood lived over 900 years. They also became extremely evil, so evil that God brought the Flood to wipe them out. A number of Christian leaders, notably Billy Graham, have thought that it is possible for a person to go so far into sin as to be beyond salvation. God limited our life spans to prevent us from going beyond the spiritual point of no return. If He had not, he would have allowed a situation to exist that might require another annihilation of the human race.

With longevity research, the Human Genome Project, and genetic engineering, we may soon give ourselves much longer life spans, and possibly physical eternal life. Lab grown skin and bones are already being used to treat burns and replace missing bones. Genetic cures for diseases are already being tried. Finding a permanent cure for aging is now a major goal of medical science. Genetically engineering humans is being considered for various applications, one of the biggest of which is to make people more suitable for space travel and life on other worlds. Cloning humans has already started.

The Third Prohibition is based on the facts that, first, God has a plan for mankind that includes, the Bible shows, parameters of both time and space. Secondly, the Bible shows that all the events associated with the Second Coming take place on earth. There is no place in the Prophecies for humans to be living anywhere else when Christ returns.

Concerning time, the term “an appointed time” occurs over a dozen times in the Bible in relation to Prophecy, as in, for example, Habakkuk 2:3, “For the revelation awaits an appointed time”. Relevant to space, in Acts 17:26, Paul tells us; “And He has”¦determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their dwellings.” God has set limits on where we can live. Several passages of Scripture also contain the idea, such as in Revelation 1:7, that when Christ returns, everyone will see Him. There is no way this could happen if humans are even scattered around our solar system, let alone on planets orbiting other stars. Yet even as we speak, there are men orbiting the earth in the Freedom Space Station.

Space travel is not presently getting either the media attention or the funding it once did. Nevertheless, it would be a serious mistake for anyone to think that it is dead. A considerable amount of the research done on space shuttle missions is aimed at acquiring knowledge for the furtherance of space travel. The first unmanned interstellar probe is being constructed, and will be launched circa 2010. New space observatories are being built. The significant thing about all these projects is the amount of international cooperation involved. Instead of competing in space, nations are now mainly cooperating.

More than that, unexpected breakthroughs could give us faster progress in the violation of all Three of the Prohibitions. Unexpected breakthroughs happen. The Internet as we know it was the result of the unforeseen development of HTML, the markup language used for making Web pages. Furthermore, scientists are not just waiting for the breakthroughs, they are actively looking for them. NASA, for example, operates a “Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Laboratory”. Its mission is to find new ways to propel space ships, particularly ways that don’t consume fuel yet enable space ships to reach very high speeds. The Laboratory checks out every proposed theory that seems to have any credibility.

Through all these things, we will soon be violating all Three of the Prohibitions and threatening God’s plan of salvation if something doesn’t happen to stop us. It can’t be just a local intervention. The whole world is involved in this. Computer programming is big business in India. China has its own space program. High school students in Saudi Arabia have to learn to use computers.

Yet there is one more major question that must be asked that underlies the whole “Babel Rising” situation. The question is: Why do we want to do these things? There is a Biblical answer to this question, and it is a very serious matter. The answer is related to the First Commandment. Yet it goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

In Exodus 20:3-6, God outlawed idolatry for all time. Yet we know that in every time, place and culture, throughout history, this commandment has been violated in one way or another. In our time, however, the worship of “graven images” is on the decline. In India, for example, which has the most wide-open idolatry of any nation on earth, “true belief” in Hinduism is on the decline. Among the wealthy and educated, it is much more a matter of culture than faith. The same is true of Buddhism in Japan, and throughout the Third World generally. The affluent and powerful often don’t really believe anything.

Yet in spite of the fact that we are abandoning that kind of idolatry, we have found new bunch of gods to worship, which are”¦OURSELVES!!! The worship of mankind by mankind is the rising idolatry of our times, yet it isn’t all that new. On the contrary, we are really reverting to the oldest, most basic form of idolatry.

When Satan tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, the main appeal of his lie was “You shall be as gods”. The Fall of Man was the result of man trying to become his own god. Similarly, the people of Babel were building the city and the Tower to keep themselves together, when God wanted them to spread out. They didn’t want to. They consciously and deliberately set out to preserve their unity. In other words, they were trying to take control of their destiny, which was tantamount to trying to become their own gods. That, by the way, is the only factual basis for the idea that they were trying to take over from God. They were, but only in the sense of controlling their own lives.

Today, the worship of man by man is everywhere in our society. We worship human achievement in sports, entertainment, business, science, and even in war and crime. The idolatry is most obvious in sports and entertainment. When someone is called a “movie idol” or a “rock’n’roll” idol, there is more truth to the term than the people who use the term realized. Those people are literally worshipped in the spiritual sense. There is a cult group, for example, that literally worships the late Elvis Presley as god. They even claim healings in his name. They are exceptional only in that what they are doing is so obvious. The idolatry is not usually so obvious, but it is definitely there. It is there in the other areas of human activity mentioned, too.
Earlier in this article, two modern proverbs were mentioned, “What mind can conceive, man can achieve”; and “The difficult we do immediately, the impossible may take a little longer”. You must be able to see the implication. Through these proverbs, the human race is saying to itself, “Is anything too hard for me?” In other words, with these proverbs mankind is effectively claiming its own divinity. Yet God said that these things are true given the conditions mentioned earlier. That is, unity, unlimited communication and enough time.

Actually, we have been trying to prove our own divinity since the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve fell, they didn’t receive the godlike knowledge that Satan promised. They did know that there was right and wrong, but they didn’t necessarily know the difference. That weakness has been the cause of an enormous amount of evil and suffering.

They lost the potential for eternal life that they had. If they had not eaten the Forbidden Fruit, they could have eaten the Fruit of the Tree of Life, and they would have lived forever.

They lost most of the dominion that God gave them. They didn’t lose all of it, contrary to what some Christians think. If they had, we would not be able to do many of the things we can do. But they lost enough of it to precipitate many of the hardships of life.

Ever since, mankind has been trying to acquire the godlike knowledge that Satan promised, and to recover the eternal life and dominion that we lost. These things have been sought down through the centuries. The priests of ancient Egypt sought it. So did the ancient Greek philosophers and the Chaldean astrologers of Babylon. Confucius and his colleagues in ancient China sought it, and so did the Alchemists of the Middle Ages. In the long run, the quest for these things has never been abandoned.

In Daniel 12:4, a Prophecy of the approach of the Second Coming, the Angel Gabriel says, “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase”. This has been fulfilled before our eyes. More traveling is being done now than ever before in history. Knowledge has been increasing exponentially. Yet this is also a prophecy of the near-fulfillment of our quest for our divinity. And we think we can do it.

The following expression has actually appeared in print: “INNOVATIONn”. Do you know what idea this refers to? Unlimited creativity! We believe that there are really no limits on human intelligence, especially as it applies to our creativity. We believe that there is, in the long run, nothing we cannot do. It must be noted, though, that this is a fairly new idea, and that in itself is significant. It was once not uncommon to hear someone say, in regard to a new idea, “It can’t be done”. We don’t hear that very much anymore. The change has taken place in less than half a century.

Yet the closer we come to achieving the goals of godlike knowledge, eternal life, and restored dominion, the greater our inclination to worship ourselves as gods becomes. Every time we make some big and highly publicized achievement, some new scientific or medical breakthrough, we are more sure of our own divinity.

Another factor that contributes to our worship of ourselves is the global increase in wealth. There has never been a time of history in which there was so much wealth in the hands of so many people. In James 5:3 we find these words: “You have heaped up treasure in the time of the end”. If this is, as it appears, a prophecy of the end times, it has also been fulfilled before our eyes. In spite of the economic slowdown, this is still increasing. In the realm of big business, success is not acquiring wealth; success is creating wealth. More and more people are succeeding in creating wealth. This is another expression of our godlike creativity, and again, it also increases our inclination to worship ourselves.

In order to prove our divinity by restoring our dominion, we want it not just over this earth, but over the entire universe. This idea was expressed some years ago in the title of a well known science fiction novel; “Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand”. This needs some interpreting. “Stars”, in the science fiction/space travel sense means not just the stars, but the planets that orbit them. In other words, entire solar systems. “In My Pocket” means “in my possession” and/or “under my control”. “Like Grains Of Sand” means “in uncountable numbers”. In other words, the writer was thinking of humans controlling entire galaxies, at least.

Mankind wants to stretch out its collective hand, seize control of the entire universe, and say to itself, “This is mine. I am God!” Understand that we are talking about what the human race wants collectively, and to some extent unconsciously, but the idea is definitely there. That’s why the goal of the fictional Starship Enterprise is “To go boldly where no one has gone before”. It is also part of what makes the series so popular. It is expressing, through fantasy, the collective will of the whole human race.

There is another related purpose to space travel; achieving eternal life for the whole human race. Humans fear death, not just as individuals, but as a race. We know how many species of life have become extinct on this earth. In recent decades, we have learned a number of specific ways in which it could really happen to us. Nuclear war has gotten the most press coverage. More recently, we have added the possibility of an asteroid or comet collision doing it. We know that a runaway Greenhouse Effect from global warming could do it. There is also fear of our being wiped out by a global epidemic, possibly caused by biological warfare.

But we have the idea that if we spread out through the universe, we can prevent the extinction of the human race from ever happening. In the science fiction novel, “Out of the Silent Planet”, by C. S. Lewis, that was why the villain, “Weston”, built a space ship and went to Mars. Lewis took the idea seriously, even though he thought it was rebellion against God.

The late American science fiction writer, Robert A. Heinlein, (one of the most famous of the 20th Century) was famous for saying, “The earth is too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in”. So he believed in the idea. There have been a number of other leaders in the fields of science and science fiction who have expressed support for the concept. The idea is that if we can establish enough self-sufficient civilizations on enough planets orbiting enough stars in enough galaxies, then no one disaster could ever wipe us out, and the human race will survive forever. The idea is a real driving force behind space travel.

Scientists, politicians and businessmen are also faced with the fearful prospect of the human race exhausting the earth’s natural resources. Space travel is expected to solve that problem too, by opening up first the whole solar system, and eventually the entire universe, to economic exploitation. This too is a driving force behind space travel.
Nevertheless, the most basic reason for all the progress that is being made in science, medicine and technology is man’s subconscious desire to prove his own divinity. It can also be viewed spiritually as a specific collective manifestation of human pride. Has it ever occurred to you that when you are being proud, you are worshipping yourself? We don’t usually call what we see in ourselves “divinity”, but we are inclined to worship ourselves just the same. This is true even though most people don’t consciously realize it. We are talking about what mankind wants and does collectively. But it isn’t entirely our idea.

We said earlier that the human race was created in God’s image collectively more than individually. This is because we were created to be the Body of Christ. That is what we as Christians collectively are. God’s original plan was for the whole human race to be the Body of Christ. Unsaved people, of course, are not part of the Body of Christ, but unsaved humanity to some extent functions as a body too. Only the head of the body is Satan.

Satan is the head of unsaved humanity in the sense of his being “the god of this world” and “the prince of the power of the air”. Unsaved humans, in following their sinful natures, obey and serve Satan without realizing that they are doing it. They unwittingly accept him as their head, as Paul said, “you were dead in your transgressions and sins”¦when you followed”¦the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient” (Ephesians 2:1 & 2 ).

In his novel “That Hideous Strength”, C. S. Lewis said, in so many words, that that is what we are doing when we engage in creative activities apart from God, and particularly activities in the fields of science, medicine and technology. And of course, space travel.

Satan has not done too well at getting people to worship him directly, though of course some people do. Nevertheless, for all the publicity that Satanists have received, they constitute a very small minority of the unsaved world, and probably always will. So he is settling for getting mankind to worship mankind. If unsaved humanity constitutes a body, and the body worships itself, and Satan is the head, then guess who is really being worshipped?

When the “man of sin”, as in II Thessalonians 2:3 & 4, “sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is god, it won’t be some mythical “Antichrist”. It will be unsaved humanity, under the control of Satan, worshipping itself as god. In fact, to a great extent, it already is.

This means that if unsaved humanity has unity and unlimited communication, Satan has the potential to completely defeat God’s plan of salvation. He can do it through our giving ourselves physical eternal life, putting us beyond salvation, and our spreading our habitation throughout the universe. If unsaved humanity spreads its habitation to other worlds, Satan’s kingdom spreads to other worlds. C. S. Lewis also presented this idea in his novels, “Perelandra” and “The Magician’s Nephew”. If unsaved humanity with physical eternal life take control of the universe, Satan takes control of the universe. Satan’s kingdom could potentially then last forever.

In Genesis 11:6, God suggested that mankind will eventually do this if we are given enough time. NO WAY WILL GOD GIVE US ENOUGH TIME!

Yet we may be closer to achieving these things than most scientists would dare to admit. For example, there are a number of things going on in the world of science that should come together to give us practical manned interplanetary travel within a half century. It may take only a few more new breakthroughs to make it practical interstellar travel. It is possible that we will have that within fifty years, too.

However, we don’t have to take over the whole universe to interfere with God’s plan. Significantly extended life spans will be a major step toward it. We could add 30+ years to the average human life span right now if everything relevant that we know were strictly and universally applied. And in space travel, one self-sufficient colony on another world, even within this solar system, will take us past the point where the Prophecies of the Second Coming can be fulfilled in any way that resembles general Christian expectations.

God must stop this new Tower of Babel from rising soon if the Prophecies are ever going to be fulfilled. Yet the only thing prophesied that will do what needs to be done is in fact the Second Coming of Christ. Or, from the standpoint of the world, the Great Tribulation. You see, God must make such a massive intervention into human affairs that He shuts down the scientific and industrial establishments of all the nations involved, and that means the whole world. There are Prophecies in the Old Testament that speak of God rebuking and breaking the power of the gentile nations. If God is going to stop this Tower of Babel from rising, He has to do that soon.

So we see that the soon Second Coming of Christ is not just likely; it is mandated by circumstances. So be admonished:

Jesus REALLY is coming soon. BE READY!!!

Moriel wants to thank William Brehm for his article but Moriel is in disagreement on the following point:

While it is indeed true that the self deification of man is of the “spirit of antichrist” (in that it places man in place of Christ as his own salvation), and while it is true that among things, secular humanism has played and continues to play a role in setting the stage for anti christ (as do ecumenism/ interfaith, new age etc.)- there will in fact ultimately be these two beasts in Revelation 13 who will be literal, actual figures.

The ultimate anti christ will be a man demon possessed by satan personally who will be born witness to by the false prophet in a mimic of the way John The Baptist in the spirit of Elijah bore witness to Jesus. The first beast is a counterfeit of Jesus. The False prophet — a counterfeit of the Holy Spirit, will we suspect at this point be a final pope figure of some description. The first beast will be “political/religious” in demeanor and the second beast conversely “religious/political” complimenting the first beast.

The first beast, second beast, and satan are a diabolical triangle counterfeiting Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; a counterfeit Trinity as the initial promise of a better world by anti christ will attempt to counterfeit the millennial reign of Christ.

There are many anti christs (Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, etc.) and many false prophets (Hinn, Joyner), all of them typifying and foreshadowing these two figures who are to emerge at the end of the age in various ways. The deification of man itself is indeed one of the manifestations of ‘the spirit of anti christ,’ in part preparing the way for these two beasts arise.

These two individuals will indeed be an embodiment, in large part, of man’s rebellion against God, but will be much more than that-the de facto incarnation of satan’s rebellion against God. Thus we have something going well beyond a corporate solidarity in the normal sense.

To suggest there will not be two literal figures is mistaken and to simply spiritualize anti christ into a satanically inspired collective human act of self worship is a mistake. This view is something satan would use as a deception to divert focus away from looking for these two individuals and being able to identify the beast by 666 as the scripture commands in Revelation 13 when the time comes.

By William D. Brehm
Bread Upon The Waters Ministry
192 N. Henry St.
Brooklyn, NY 11222
http://www.be-ready.org