If Satan wants his false prophets to gain credibility, he has to make it look like they are making prophesies, or interpreting them, in a way that appears they are actually coming true! These prophesies have to be close enough that people believe they were from God. Some of what they say must appear to have been correct!

Satan, actually, has no control over when the End Times events occur; This is something that God the Father has reserved for Himself. Satan can, however, provide false interpretations of these same events.

Don’t get me wrong, Satan certainly is involved in the current world events, but he can only work when God allows him to do it. He is on a leash, like a vicious dog, but within the confines of his leash, he has considerable freedom to do as he pleases. And, he can bark, and growl, and whisper lies as much as he wants!

So, would it surprise you that Evangelical and Fundamentalist teachers are teaching things that ultimately have their origin with Satan? In the end, will these Evangelical and Fundamentalist Churches join together in ecumenical unity with the likes of the New Apostolic Reformation, the mainline denominations, and the Roman Church?

Absolutely, yes!

“And he said, Take heed that ye be not deceived: for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and the time draweth near: go ye not therefore after them.” Luke 21:8

Rapture Ready is a Christian Apologetic End Times prophecy website which actually does have some excellent articles. In amongst these articles, however, it also carries some articles which are teaching error. This week I was reading an article by Alan Franklin; The European Stage Is Set for Antichrist and I couldn’t help noting some notable errors.

Again, there is some truth in this article.

He states of the current influx of “refugees” into Europe;

“Most of the current immigrants are Islamic, with up to 90 per cent being men aged around 25 to 35. So are they mainly coming to Europe to work, when Europe already has an average of eleven percent of its workforce unemployed? Further, there is over 20 percent unemployment of those under 25 across the EU.

If the immigrants were really being attacked by terrorists, would they not wish to stay and defend their wives and children?When Hitler threatened to invade England, the men dug in and were ready to defend every inch of British soil; they did not run away.”

I certainly can agree with everything he says in these two paragraphs. The current influx of young Muslim men into Europe is actually an invasion, and it is going to lead to serious trouble both in Europe and in North America. And, by “trouble” I mean war.

From a human perspective of the Muslim invasion into the west, I could not disagree with Franklin at all. My disagreement comes from his interpretation of the End Times events, and his reading his own eschatology into the bible’s text.

Earlier he had written;

“The continent is in turmoil. The nations of the European Union, 28 countries from the United Kingdom to the Baltics, are facing an influx of immigrants unseen since the end of the Second World War. Hundreds were filmed attacking Hungarian border guards while screaming “Allahu akbar” which in Arabic means “god is great.”

I write “god” with a lower case “g.” The key point for those looking at the spiritual dimension of this invasion is that we do NOT all worship the same god.”

The Roman Catholic uses a capital “G” for their god, and so do the Muslims who speak and write in English. By insisting that the Muslim God should be written with a lower case “g” he is causing his readers to misunderstand Daniel 11:36-37

36 And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done. 37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.

As he states later “Muslims don’t deny there is a God in heaven”, they only deny that God has a son. But since he himself notes that Muslims do proclaim that there is a God in Heaven, it is entirely possible that “the God of his fathers” could be the God of Islam.  It is, as we shall see…

Since verse 37 specifically states that the Antichrist will not regard, or care about, the God of his fathers, it is entirely possible that he could be a descendant of a long line of Muslims! Since verse 36 separates the God of gods from the God of his fathers, this is the most likely interpretation of this verse; The God of his fathers is a monotheistic God, but not the God of the bible!

He also states;

“Scripture tells why we won’t have an Islamic Antichrist. Daniel 9:26 confirms the Antichrist’s Roman origin. Verse 27 shows he will make a peace/protection treaty with Israel, which will signal the start of the Tribulation.”

As I have noted in the Spirit of Prophecy, there is a common, shallow, interpretation of Daniel 9:26 that does not examine all the details of the destruction of Jerusalem.

And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

Most bible scholars simply look at the big picture; that the armies of Rome destroyed Jerusalem around 70 AD. This is incorrect and actually glosses over the details of that event.

The armies of Rome contained many soldiers from many nations, and Josephus’ account specifically details how Vespasian had stopped in Damascus on his march toward Jerusalem, and had picked up “many auxiliaries from the kings in that neighbourhood”

“So Vespasian sent his son Titus from Achaia, where he had been with Nero, to Alexandria, to bring back with him from thence the fifth and the tenth legions, while he himself, when he had passed over the Hellespont, came by land into Syria, where he gathered together the Roman forces, with a considerable number of auxiliaries from the kings in that neighbourhood.” (Josephus, Book 3, chapter 1)

So we know that there were many Syrian soldiers among the Roman armies that ransacked Jerusalem, thus it is possible that the Antichrist could have a Syrian background! This, however, is not deep enough! Lets go deeper, and farther back in time! Even as the Roman armies were advancing on Jerusalem, someone else got there first, and set the events in motion!

The Idumeans, the descendants of Jacob’s brother Esau, attacked the city at night, and killed some 20,500 people including 8,000 men in the Temple itself! They also held a kangaroo trial and killed the High priest Ananus and his deputy, named Jesus, and thus ensured the destruction of Jerusalem.

As Josephus notes, Ananus and Jesus were cognizant of the fact that the Jews could not defeat Rome, and were prepared to negotiate a surrender. With these two benefactors dead, the Idumeans left the Zealots in charge of Jerusalem. The Zealots were so filled with hatred toward their conquerors that they were prepared to sacrifice the entire city in defiance of Rome! And, that is exactly what happened! (Josephus, The Jewish War, Book 4, chapter 5, Section 2)

Josephus specifically lays the blame for the destruction of Jerusalem directly at the feet of the Idumeans, and thus we can be sure that the Antichrist will come from the descendants of the Idumeans, Israel’s neighbor on the east!

So, when Daniel notes that the Beast will conquer the whole world, there is one little nation that he will not conquer; Edom, Moab and Ammon are today united together in the little nation just to the east of Israel, on the same territory that their ancestors lived on some 3,000 years ago!

“He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon.” Daniel 11:41

Many prophecy “scholars” have speculated that this little nation will be too strong for the man who is able to conquer the whole world! Hmm?  Or maybe they are just too small for him to be bothered with? No! No way! The Antichrist will not conquer this nation because they are his people! They are his original power base, and he has no need to conquer them!  They will be on-side with the Antichrist from the beginning!

What an ingenious way of putting it! If God had said “the people of Edom, Moab, and Ammon, are the people of the Antichrist” many innocent generations of their descendants, some of them Christians, would have been hunted down and exterminated by Rome and others. By hiding their identity in the sands of history, and the pages of Scripture, it was left to the End Times generation to discover who it is the Antichrist calls his family!

By passing off this shallow excuse for exegesis, Alan Franklin has joined the ranks of false teachers! I hope he digs deeper and repents of this false teaching. Just because this article aligns itself with the majority, it does not mean that it is correct!

The current European crisis will indeed lead to the break-up of the European Union into several smaller economic and political unions. One of these unions will be a ten nation confederacy led by a charismatic dictator, and he and the pope will work together, until they are destroyed during the Gog/Magog war.

No doubt when this happens men like Alan Franklin will claim that they had indeed identified the Antichrist. With the “Antichrist” out of the way there will be nothing to stop the Christian denominations to set-up an ecumenical union.

Roman Catholic Churches will admit that Preterism, and Amillennialism had been wrong, and that this latest war “had been Armageddon” and this new-found humility will lead the protestants to be willing to join with them, setting up a new headquarters in Babylon. (Yes ISIS will be defeated by this time as well, and the “Christians” will have returned to Iraq.)

When these things happen then the world will be ready to set up a global government, and the only thing opposed to it will be true believers who understand that this “Armageddon” was only a Church-age war, and that the real Beast is set to rise! They will be persecuted, and hunted down until the Lord Himself takes them in the Pre-Tribulation rapture, and then “the word will be as one” as John Lennon said!