Understanding The End Times

Friday, March 26, 2021

First, an analogy of our global crisis: “If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti-Mask. Vax vs. Anti-vax. Rich vs. poor. Man vs. woman. Cop vs. citizen. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar… and why?” (Shera Starr). Very true!

Every week I read numerous commentaries on current events, and in most of them the authors know that, unlike ever before, something is desperately wrong with our world, but don’t know why. They know it, see it; they vividly sense it. The violence, hatred, and outrage seethe and is now the norm, but why? Indeed, “Who is shaking the jar?” Satan’s growing power eludes them. They don’t know that the end of this age is upon them, and that as Satan’s power is increasing, he is inciting the rage, hatred, division and lies. And in their lack of knowledge of the truth, many are left to aimless wandering, looking for answers. And that’s why Christians must stand in the gap, and tell them the road ahead will only get worse, and to be saved by true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe it or not, sadly, these end-time signs even elude many in the church.

Secondly, know God’s Word. As the seven-year tribulation approaches, God’s restraint on evil lessens, until “He [God] who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one [Antichrist] will be revealed…according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders” (2 Thess. 2:9). Note my emphasis on “with all power” and know that God will allow Satan to rule “with all power”. That’s why we see such increased evil, deception and tyrannical controls in the world today. It’s because Satan is increasingly being given more power. And his power will increase until “It was granted to him [Antichrist] to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation” (Rev. 13:7 ~ Dan. 7:21), in the 7-year tribulation. Those will be very difficult days.

Third, as Satan’s power has increased, the world has been deceived by COVID-19 lockdowns, mask-wearing, social distancing, and vaccines, all preparatory for Antichrist’s global control. That control will prove effective via COVID vaccine mandates. It’s medical tyranny. And why would true Christians refuse the COVID vaccines? Because they contain aborted fetal cells, and those vaccines are killers. By false medical distractions, people are unsuspectingly yielding to Satan’s increasing power which will ultimately become the basis for issuing and mandating “the mark of the beast” (Rev. 13:16–17) at the middle of the seven-year tribulation. Be discerning.

Obedience to Satan’s powers has steps: 1) convince people of a global pestilence (indiscreetly created by globalists); 2) ask them to make economic concessions, stay home, don’t go to work; 3) if asking doesn’t work, then impose harsh mandates; 4) lockdowns, masks, social distancing; 5) ask people to get vaccinated; 6) if asking doesn’t work, restrict their freedoms; 7) and for the non-compliant, impose more severe restrictions; and 8) for continued non-compliance, restrict them from virtually every venue of public travel, churches, civic and social activities, holding out the tyrants’ vaccines as their ticket to freedoms. And the world gratuitously bows down!

Read this and watch this “Outcry To The World From Israel” if it hasn’t already been banned by Big Tech. Israel has subjected its population to mandatory COVID-19 vaccines. A “Green Pass” is now required for accessing public venues. People are tracked by wrist and ankle bracelets, a part of the Great Re Set in action, and will soon be mandatory globally. Governments and their globalist pawns are dead serious about their control which they will not relinquish. They’ll win this temporal battle, but they will lose the war on the Great Day of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s not surprising that Israel is the frontrunner in end-time totalitarian controls. Here’s why: biblically, the land of Israel is the epicenter of tribulation events. And the woes that befall the world will likely occur first in Israel, because Jerusalem, Israel will be the seat of authority for the Antichrist, when he “exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thess. 2:4). Because of this, Jesus said “when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place…then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (Matt. 24:15).

The evil trappings of COVID-19 have conditioned people for the next malevolent crisis, one of globalists’ own creation for which they will again have a solution. And that solution will always be anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-freedom, designed to force people’s obedience to Satan’s powers. Antichrist’s coming “with all power” is deceptive and destructive, and unless we’re grounded in the knowledge of God by true faith and discernment from the Holy Spirit, we too will ask “Who is shaking the jar?” But joy to the believer, for “He [Christ] who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Therefore, people must be spiritually born again, John 3:3–8, to be in a position to receive God’s guardian spiritual protection of knowledge, faith and discernment.

Recently, I was speaking with two strong believers very close to me, and one quoted this highly relevant Scripture. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’ Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:18–21).

Indeed, the salvation message of the cross of Jesus Christ is foolishness to the unbelieving world, for which it has no knowledge, or wisdom of the events about to bring this present age to its end. And for the pre-trib rapture believers who do know the Lord Jesus Christ through salvation faith, if they do not change course from their unbelief of what Christ taught for the end-times, to belief, they too will be left without knowledge or discernment of that which is to come, for their hope is a false hope, entirely devoid of the post-trib rapture teachings of Christ for the times of the end. I fear, spiritually, for this latter group who say they believe, but in their hearts and minds have a hope that is “wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” (Rev. 3:17). They say they believe, but they only believe what their tradition says to believe, and not what Christ taught of the end.

Fourth, Satan’s Antichrist comes not only “with all power”, but with “signs, and lying wonders” (2 Thess. 2:9); signs that defy knowledge, indeed, as Jesus said, “signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:24). Remember, in Christ, you and I are the “elect”; Mark 13:22; Luke 18:7; Rom. 8:33; Rom. 11:7; Col. 3:12; and 2 Tim. 2:10. I can’t impress upon you sufficiently the truth that, as these days darken, manifold and magnificent deceptions and lying wonders will punctuate the world. And worse, many deceptions now come through the church, by “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works” (2 Cor. 11:13–15). Only you can discern your own associations.

Understanding the end-times means discerning the truth that Satan and his Antichrist are being given increasing power in the world and in churches, until, at the start of the tribulation he comes “with all power”. So, “examine yourselves” (2 Cor. 13:5), and your associations with the world and the churches; if it’s with the Rev. 2 & 3 loveless, corrupt, dead, or lukewarm churches, get out of those associations, and prepare yourself and your loved ones to be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ. Little time remains before the end-time apocalypse engulfs the whole world.

Marlin J. Yoder