EndTime Issues ...

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Introduction
 
Ever since Satan’s successful incursion into Adam and Eve’s thinking, a war between the massive powers of evil and the agencies of heaven has waged. Expositor White eloquently notes:
 
“The great controversy between Christ and Satan, that has been carried on for almost six thousand years, is soon to close. And yet how few have their attention called to this matter, how few realize that we are living amid the closing scenes of earth's history! Satan is working diligently, binding his sheaves preparatory to gathering in his harvest. He is uniting the elements of his kingdom for the final struggle.”[1]
 
John addresses the fueling of that frenzied effort as he recognizes that “he has only a short time” to work (Revelation 12:12). That implies that he is anticipating the imminent coming of Christ, which will bring his venomous work to an end.

• Many scholars tie this final time especially to the three and a half years/1260 days/42 months within Revelation.[2]
• This also coincides with John’s anticipatory words that “time would be no longer delayed” (Revelation 10:6 – NIV). Some “time” has been on hold which suddenly moves forward.

In this apocalyptic setting Satan is taking a feverish initiative, especially through his agents:
 
“As we near the end, Satan will be moved to make a desperate effort to overthrow all those who dispute his claim to supreme authority on earth, and the people of God must be prepared for the struggle. God requires the full exercise of all the ability he has given to men, that they may do to the extent of their natural and cultivated powers, all that is possible for them to do. Every agency is to be quickened, that the great work may be accomplished, and we must work with an intensity that we have never felt before.”[3]
 
The first distinct prophetic clue of an apostate power emerging to assist Satan in the Christian era came from Daniel.
 
“As I was contemplating the horns, another horn – a small one – came up between them…. This horn had eyes resembling human eyes and a mouth speaking arrogant things” (Daniel 7:8 – NET).
 
Contextually, a horn is an agency, an institution, even a nation, that gives power to the beast it is on. Those Danelic details are provided in a separate study.[4]

• Of importance to this document is how this authority moved forward to become a present-day medium for Satan’s wrath.
• Many conclude that this horn’s sinister work began with the Holy Roman Empire, since it is sequenced after the beast that represents the rise and fall of secular Rome (Daniel 7:8). It has more recently become a geopolitical force of fearful significance (Daniel 7:24-25; 8:9-12).

Satan’s Hostility Accelerated with the Counter Reformation
 
The dark history of papal power fills thousands of volumes. Its comprehensive long-range strategy was launched August 15, 1534, by Ignatius Loyola with a new Catholic Order, the “The Company of Jesus,” later called the “Society of Jesus.” It became a cadre of Jesuit “soldiers” bent on a fierce Counter-Reformation. These men became a “secret weapon” for the Church to regain its religious and secular power, threatened especially by the work and influence of Martin Luther.

• The Council of Trent (1545–1563) formalized its public response to the growing Protestant threat.
• Loyola’s brigade, with Pope Paul III’s affirmation, permitted a special constitution for the order.[5] It was deeply at variance with the published catachial directives of the Church.
• The Jesuits actually became a “secular breed of priests.”

The ultimate goal was to secure for “the pope of Rome … absolute sovereignty and supremacy over all the governments of the earth.”[6] This was called the “Grand Design.”

Their modus operandi was/is summed up in these three rules: “(1) the end justifies the means to “operate” – in other words, by any means necessary; (2) that it is safe to do any action if it be probably right, although it may be more probably wrong; and (3) that if one knows how to direct the intention aright (i.e. by using good intentions), there is no deed whatever its moral character, which one may not do.”[7]
 
If the intention is good, anything is lawful. Deception became a justifiable means through equivocation, casuistry and probabilism to obtain any goal to undermine Protestantism. Even murder was justified.[8]
 
Fast forward to Jesuit Malachi Martin in his book Keys of this Blood. When Pope John Paul II came to power the “Millennial End-game” began. What was its objective? The destruction of both communism and capitalism with eventual control of each individual in a new world government.[9]
 
An aide to Napoleon had noted: “The Jesuits are a military organization, not a religious order… the aim of this organization is POWER–POWER in its most despotic exercise. Absolute power, universal power, power to control the world...”[10]
 
Part of their assignment was to set up a massive network of educational institutions to gain influence over the youth and mold these future leaders to benefit Rome. They enlisted the most talented minds for this academic work. Today there are 29 Jesuit universities and colleges in the United States. One key objective: train political leaders to rise to the highest level of office possible.
 
A major effort was made to stamp out the Jesuits in Europe in the 1700s because of their violence. Notable was the imprisonment of the Jesuit Superior General Lorenzo Ricci, SJ, August 17, 1773, in Italy. He was shrewd and able to wield assassins’ power – even from prison.

• For 41 years, history perceives the Society of Jesus as “dissolved” and then being reestablished by Pope Pius VII in 1814.
• However, by the middle of the 19^th century Marquis d’Azeglio, an Italian statesman, said: “We had gotten rid of the Jesuits in Italy as far as human power could, but in England it continued to swarm with them.”[11]

A former priest and Catholic “insider” wrote: “This war [Civil War in America] would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to the Popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons.”[12]
 
Fast forward: In 2013 163 members of Congress were Catholic, nearly one third trained in Jesuit universities.[13]

• On April 25, 2001, Jesuit Stephen A. Privett, SJ, President of Jesuit run University of San Francisco, said: “At the Jesuit University of San Francisco, we aim to educate students to change the world!”[14]
• On February 28, 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis – the first Jesuit pope. In 2015 he called for a new system of global government to tackle worldwide threats.[15]

In an interview with La Stampa, an Italian newspaper, Pope Francis said that ecumenism was his priority. Commensurate with that, the now retired president of Israel, Shimon Peres, felt comfortable visiting the Pope in April, 2013. Later in another Vatican dialogue he even asked him to be the head of the world’s religions. The new president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, flew to the Vatican and met with Pope Francis September 3, 2015. Issues discussed were not fully disclosed – but many concluded that it related to the large number of land holdings Rome has in Israel and relief of tension in that area.[16]
 
Of increasing interest has been Francis’ outspoken rhetoric against capitalism. The Catholic social doctrine formulated in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII remains in force today (with many supportive papal encyclicals since). Denying Marxism and Liberation Theology (an Argentinean brand of this ideology), Francis’ speeches and writings distinctly lean heavily towards a form of that socialism.

• Ideologically, he claims a geopolitical bent toward Peronism from the late Argentine president, Juan Peron (1946–1955).
• That was a special brand of fascism. Peron was an admirer of Benito Mussolini, the leader of fascism where authority was centralized over a “collective” state.[17],[18]
• Both Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2009 encyclical Caritas en Veritate, and Pope Francis, in Laudato Si, appeal for a centralized world power!

The rise in influence of the “Grand Design” is now reaching a palpable reality, as envisioned nearly five centuries ago by Ignatius Loyola. Christianity’s elevated objectives and directives are absent (Galatians 5:22, Ephesians 5:9). It is a secularized religious ideology that threatens man’s moral conscience!

Marxism: Its Influence Today
 
Another force that aimed to undermine Christianity at “Satan’s behest” was the ideological child of Karl Marx.

• Marx was a mid-1800 century philosopher, economist and revolutionary socialist.
• He wrote many books – the most famous being The Communist Manifesto (1848).
• His collective ideas about economics, society and politics are known as Marxism.

He held that society can be held together through:

1. Class struggle for economic equality – maintaining conflict between business owners and the laboring class
2. A ruling class (“elites” of today) to represent the “common interest” of labor
3. Capitalism would ultimately fail and must be resisted through revolutionary means.
4. Collective ownership is the method that protects everyone.[19]

Because of the influence of his political theories, his books and ideas, he has been dubbed by many internationalists as the “greatest thinker” in a millennium.[20]

Shortly before Karl Marx died, Pope Leo XIII, without any real land assets (all taken by the new Italian government), wrote an encyclical Rerum Novarum (On Capital and Labor). This marked the beginning of the Catholic Church’s “social teaching” with Marxist leaning.
 
Appealing to greed, the Roman Catholic social doctrine has now evolved into one that:

• Demands full employment for everyone
• A just wage for everyone to support a family
• Redistribution of wealth – per concerns for poor
• Workers’ rights, including the creation of labor unions

Though Marxism has many ideological variants, as does the Catholic social doctrine, they have much in common, including the need for that strong “centralized, dictatorial control.”[21]

• Jesuit Pope Francis sympathizes with these far left ideologies.
• His recent trip to Bolivia (July 2015) was informative. Evo Morales, its president, gave him a gift – the hammer and sickle on which Christ was crucified. Its symbols seemed to epitomize the horrors of communism against Christianity. And – while giving him that gift, he wore a picture of the despot revolutionary Che Guevara on his jacket.
• Che Guerara devoted his life to undermining human liberty, killing innocents and despising Christianity.[22]

Morales is a fascist. He notes that he had a friend and ally with the Pope in his battle for revolutionary social change and, yes, halting global warming.[23] The latter has become a geopolitical pretext for authoritarian control.
 
The most inflammatory social encyclical came from Pope Paul VI – Populorum Progresso (On the Development of Peoples) in 1967.

• The Wall Street Journal (3/30/67) called this “warmed over Marxism.”
• Ayn Rand (1905–1982), in her book Requiem for Man, devoted a chapter against Populorum Progresso:

“The encyclical is the manifesto of an impassioned hatred for capitalism; but its evil is much more profound and its target is more than mere politics…. To a mystic-altruist sense of life, words are mere approximations; hence the encyclical’s tone of evasion….
 
“It was not produced by the sense of life of any one person, but by the sense of life of an institution….
 
“Observe that it is not aimed at destroying man’s mind, but at a slower, more agonizing equivalent: at enslaving it….
 
“But, you say, the encyclical’s ideal will not work? It is not intended to work….
 
“The encyclical insists emphatically on only two political demands: that the nations of the future embrace statism, with a totalitarian control of their citizens’ economic activities – and that these nations unite into a global state, with a totalitarian power over global planning….
 
“The Catholic Church has never given up the hope to re-establish the medieval union of church and state, with a global state and a global theocracy as its ultimate goal….”[24]
 
On the heels of that encyclical and with such negative responses, came the Club of Rome in 1973, founded by R. C. Aurelia Paccei. It was developed to be a “Roman Catholic” think tank to create chaos far beyond “workers’ rights,” the “poor” and a centralized geopolitical leadership.
 
It published a Book: The Limits of Growth (with creative and statistical help from MIT). This became another alibi to bring unrest, uncertainty and authoritarian control. Its recommendations were secular and unrelated to the Church shadowing its work.
 
The planet was destined for an apocalyptic end unless a myriad of issues were urgently addressed. Here are just five examples (among nearly a score):

1. Clean air – the environment – must urgently be addressed. Air pollution must be regulated. Concern for the environment led to the global warming movement, then rising ozone and CO₂ level “worries.” Now, because of global cooling, it is called “climate change.”
2. Population – earth soon won’t be able to hold the numbers. The population must be contained, even decreased.
3. Economics – poverty will grow unless wealth is redistributed (one of the greatest assertions for power).
4. Fresh water resources will be depleted or become polluted unless new regulating agencies assume control.
5. Food will soon become limited because of pollution and climate change. The government must control agriculture production.

All these were based on a growing contribution of simulated computer models. They now serve as a geopolitical catalyst to move toward a centralized regulated world.

• Out of this came the United Nations’ interest in “Sustainable Development” – an agenda to assure “sustainable” resources for the survival of humanity. It is called Agenda 21, which was set on a timetable.  
• Its implementation formally begins in December, 2015.
• Pope Francis, in his May 2015 Laudato Si encyclical notes: “The world needs a moral leader to coordinate all the changes coming to it to achieve ‘sustainable development.’”

189 nations have pledge/signed support of this United Nations initiative, including the Vatican:

1. To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. To achieve universal primary education
3. To promote gender equality and empower women
4. To reduce child mortality
5. To improve material health
6. To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. To ensure environment sustainability (one of the targets in this goal focuses on increasing sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation)
8. To develop a global partnership for its development – a New World Order

• May 9, 2014, Ban Ki-moon, with his executive staff flew to the Vatican to discuss many of these issues. (Why such a major step? This is Revelation 13 and 17 – significant!)
• The Pope’s United Nations address September 25, 2015, brought up many of these concerns in support of the major moves about to be initiated.

Satan, over five centuries, has spawned successful movements that are now undermining man’s moral freedom through coercion, reliance on man without God, and violence and hatred toward true Christianity. Perhaps, however, to date, no cultural force has equaled what began in Europe in the early twentieth century and is eroding the very dignity of man’s nature.

1. At creation, man was made in God’s image.
2. As we approach the end, man is being driven through debauchery to reveal an image of Satan.

We urge our readers to study the following topic to grasp more deeply what we are seeing today!
 
Cultural Marxism
 
Paul notes in Ephesians 6:12 that the prince of darkness, the ruler of this world, is Satan (cf. I John 14:30, II Corinthians 4:4). A century ago the devil baptized the Christian world with an evil that has now exploded into an inferno.

• It was in 1923 that Georg Lukacs established a Marxist/Sigmund Freud-based research center at the University of Frankfurt, eventually called The Institute of Social Research. Because of World War II it moved to Columbia University in New York.
• Joining this “movement” and embracing radical socialism was Antonio Gramsci of Italy.
• Both men concluded that the obstacle standing in the way of a “communist new world order” was the Christian West.[25]

The institute became an academic think tank with the objective of translating Marxism from its economic ideology to a cultural one through a philosophy called “critical theory,” criticizing traditional mores. This was described by its new director Max Horkheimer (1930) as liberating “human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.”[26]

• That was the beginning of debasing male/female relationships and Judeo-Christian values. Through academia and cultural subversion,[27] the family and Christianity were to be broken down.
• Over the next thirty years fifty scholars from that Institute obtained faculty positions throughout America. This opened the door to a “new left,” liberalism and “progressive cultural objectives,” greater than all the formal ideologies of the past two centuries – their modus operandi:

1. Create comprehensive deconstruction of American culture
2. Infiltrate the media and entertainment industries with anti-Christian concepts
3. Celebrate sexual liberation[28]

 
The single most influential event during this period was the publication of Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse in 1955.[29] This was quickly adopted as a textbook of social studies in many universities.

• It was a wholesale repudiation of the foundation of Western civilization.
• This was the spark that ignited the sexual revolution, abolition of the family and glorification of hedonism in the 1960s.
• Intriguingly, Marcuse also advocated the end of capitalism – just as Pope Francis is currently urging.

These trends also contributed to the onset of:

1. Antiwar movements pushed forward by Eric Froom – an institute supporter
2. The radicalization of student activists in the 1960s at Berkley
3. Then the rise of “single issue” political movements (radical feminists, black extremists, animal rights, environmentalists, gay rights, multiculturalism, reproductive rights, diversity, sex education, tolerance, social justice, economic justice, hate crimes and political correctness).

All these things forwarded an agenda of psycho-political manipulation to control people, subvert Christianity and create “cultural guilt.”[30]
 
Theodor Adorno published The Authoritarian Personality (1950). His influence continues and is responsible for the relentless criticism of Christians, the Ten Commandments and even the military. Sympathizing organizations have included the ACLU (American Civil Liberty Union), People for the American Way, United for Peace and Justice, Planned Parenthood, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States and Code Pink for Peace.[31]
 
Why is all this important to Christians?

• The “cultural sensitivity” that identifies much of America today is creating “group solidarity” against God, Christian morals and the very liberty America has been based on.
• There is an apolitically defined way of speaking, acting, even thinking that is driving this “new culture” based on hedonistic mores. Kids in schools are being indoctrinated in “avoidance behavior” so they “won’t offend.” And – the barriers of privacy between the sexes is being abolished through shared bathrooms and even lockerrooms.

Paid social psychologists are guiding the political establishment to change America’s way of thinking. For Obama, that even started in his first run for president.[32]

• This month (October 2015) Assistant Attorney General John Carlin from the Obama Justice Department, announced the teaming up with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to combat “domestic terrorism.”
• This creates a whole new division within the Justice Department.
• The purpose: “to counteract right wing extremism,” claimed as a greater danger to America than Islamic terrorism!

The SPLC is anti-Christian and has a “Hate Watch” list that includes many churches (intriguingly, including several Seventh-day Adventist congregations), presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson, the Family Research Council and Liberty Counsel that represents Kim Davis (the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses).[33]

• The Obama administration is using the SPLC as an advisor:

“Your right to speak, believe and even think independently is about to be tested.”[34]
 
From the birthing of Cultural Marxism and the present post-modern society where values have become “relative” came the ever evolving “political correctness” movement!

• This is another “command and control” device.
• It has even affected the religions of the world by creating “religious correctness” in attitudes toward secular concerns.

October 16-19, 2015, Salt Lake City, Utah, the Parliament of World Religions met. Its 10,000 attendees were encouraged to sign “declarations” in support of six areas (the topics of their presentations):

1. Climate change
2. Economic inequality
3. Women’s rights
4. Hatred, violence, war
5. Support of indigenous people
6. Emerging leaders (children and youth)

The issues were “secular” and “cultural.” Any appeal to the Creator God or Scripture was absent.
 
Intriguingly, in 2003 the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation announced a $1.2 million tax-payer financed study to prove that moral traditionalists (Christians) are mentally disturbed. “Scholars” from the University of Maryland, University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University determined that social conservatives suffer from “mental rigidity,” “dogmatism” and “uncertainty avoidance.”[35]
 
Summary
 
As fundamental Judeo–Christian values are being targeted in America, a rising figure, Pope Francis, has come over the horizon, claiming geopolitical moral relevance with frequent references to Jesus Christ and prayer.

• Rome’s earmarks are familiar: pomp, Scriptural phrases, crosses, beads, complex liturgy, worship rites and traditions.
• Yet, its interest in secular power comes subtly in its moral concern for social issues, especially the poor.
• A new day dawned in April 2015 when Francis urged Catholics to take on new responsibilities. They “must get involved in politics even if it may be dirty, frustrating and fraught with failure. This was especially addressed to agencies inspired by Ignatian spirituality.
• He said that politics is one of the “highest forms of charity.” In fact, politics and spirituality go hand in hand.[36]

In the façade of moral leadership, the promiscuous sexuality of “celebate” priests (10,000+ now) have adopted one “rite” of the Cultural Marxist – liberal sexual values. Yet, they emerge like the warmth of a rising sun as a rescue machine to a faltering culture. Francis is offering advice to America on:

1. Equal pay for women
2. Sinfulness of birth control
3. Activist intervention to preserve the planet from climate change
4. And – what the Cultural Marxists’ ultimate aim is: destruction of the American way. His frequent lambasting of capitalism has become almost an “authoritarian badge” – yet any alternative “way” is never recommended.

Francis appeals to greed: money, prosperity, home, job and health. Yet the social dogma of the church calls for collectivist ownership of all. Stunning is the Vatican’s “full membership” in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), chartered for the international promotion of nuclear energy! Their centralized power is enormous, their sway in the United Nations and with such agencies is strong, and their façade of moral leadership receives obeisance from the world.
 
People are “wondering” after an institution and a leader without ideological sensitivity, except that he dresses in white, is religious and so influential. America spent tens of millions of dollars to accommodate his recent U.S. visit. He was given the authority to address and “preach” to some of the world’s most powerful leaders – Congress and the United Nations.
 
In December of 2015 the Jubilee Year of Mercy begins, proclaimed by Pope Francis, when indulgences will be given even by parish priests – men – human beings who hear it all and assume a role claimed by God only. 2016 is anticipated to be pivotal to Christianity and globalism. Forces are underway that only a final “loud gospel cry” will partially quell. Christ’s return will be earth’s last rescue mission.
 
“Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand” (Joel 2:1).
 
“The great day of the LORD is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the LORD” (Zephaniah 1:14).