When we read the bible we are given the promise of a Messiah from the very beginning, in Genesis , when God promises Abraham that his seed will be a blessing to the whole world. And at the end of the bible we are told of the tribulations we will suffer when the Anti-Messiah takes rulership of the world and tries to destroy God’s people, who will be the ones remaining faithful to Him and trusting in Yeshua as their Messiah.
There are many warnings about these End Times, in Hebrew called the Acharit Hayamin. Yeshua describes the things to look for in Matthew 24:4-15:
Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
The A-C (it gets tiresome typing Anti-Christ all the time) is talked about in Revelation 13:5 as having 42 months of total rulership over the entire earth. I am not going to do a detailed exegesis of Revelation because, frankly, I don’t understand it well enough to teach about it. What I do know is that the A-C will appear to be an all-powerful, divine creature who survives some fatal attack, then rises to take control of the earth. The power that he will have will amaze and astonish people, but what this power is might be anything.
OK, so we know that there will be political turmoil, ecological upheavals and other bad things happening all over the world before the A-C takes charge. There will also be a false prophet, a beast and a dragon, all associates of the A-C, that will amaze people and cause them to accept the A-C as their Messiah. This means we are not really looking for a single A-C, but (at least) three separate entities, all working in unison to promote the A-C.
Now to tell you how I think we will be able to identify the A-C. The A-C will be the one who brings order and peace to the world; as such, we won’t know who that is until we can identify the greatest threat to order and peace in the world. So I ask you: what is the most chaotic thing that is happening nearly everywhere in the civilized world? Isn’t it the international terrorism of the Islamic extremists?
We have plenty of ecological events happening: the Tsunami’s, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. going on all over the world, with the consequent famines and disease and poverty and starvation. End Times eschatology tells us these things will happen in unison with political trauma, and Man-oh-Manischevitz, don’t we have that in abundance now?
The A-C will be the one who puts an end to all these terrible events.
Here’s how I see it happening: I believe we will see, originating in the United Nations, an international police organization come into being which will be empowered with authority throughout the membership of the UN to attack and defeat all forms of terrorism in the world. There will, of course, have to be management of this police force, and that will be through a triune leadership. One will be in charge of policing actions (the Beast), one will be in charge of the administration of the program (the Dragon), and one will be in charge of reporting all that the police force accomplishes to the UN and the world (the False Prophet.) These three will lead this international police force in establishing the peace and prosperity of the world by defeating terrorism in a totally cruel and efficient manner.
For security purposes they will request (and receive) authority to establish world-wide martial law, and through this mandate they will control the world. Again, as a means of protecting the people, to simplify control there will be a single form of money, and the leaders of the world will report to this police force, essentially creating a de facto one-world government. This won’t just be acceptable to the people, but they will actually be thankful for it. In order to make it impossible for a terrorist to buy supplies or weapons without being known, all those who are “law-abiding citizens of the world” will be required to take the “Mark”, which will be the only acceptable form of ID to allow people to buy anything. Henceforth, anyone without the “Mark” will be considered a terrorist and an enemy of the world. This will be the beginning of the persecution and murder of God’s people, who will not be turned and refuse to take the “Mark.”
In this scenario, can you see how people will not only be giving their permission to the A-C to rule them, but will actually be thankful for his control and power? People will eagerly accept his “Mark” so that they can live peacefully. To those without the knowledge of the word of God and the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) to open their eyes and ears to what is happening, it will seem that Messiah has returned. And if you think it was bad for a Jew in Nazi Germany, that will be a cake-walk for anyone in the world without the “Mark” when these events come to be.
Then things will really get bad; not so much for those that have the “Mark”, but for those that are remaining faithful to God and the real Messiah, Yeshua. We will have Tribulation like nothing ever before, and for 3 years or so we will be in great turmoil. This is what Yeshua warned us about; many will be turned from the faith and only those that hold on will be saved. Many, many thousands will be put to death in the name of Yeshua, but those that do survive will be able to see what everyone who believes in Messiah Yeshua wants to see: Yeshua riding on the clouds in power and majesty, taking power back from the A-C and chaining him up for a thousand years.
This is what I believe will happen. Although I can’t really call this a “vision”, the entire scenario came to me in a second as I was reading this morning’s paper about how England says it will tighten it’s security after yesterday’s (6/4/17) terrorist attack. I guess we won’t know how correct I am until it happens, so please accept this as a viable scenario, Then, if I am right about this, at least you have been alerted as to what you can expect.