Friday, January 31, 2025
Waiting for truth can be difficult, but truth will ultimately prevail. Truth may not come in the time of our choosing, but truth will ultimately prevail. The many intolerable evils of man and governments in this age can be very trying, but they will be shown for what they are and truth will ultimately prevail. It’s especially true for we who know the truth by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ because we know that God in Christ will, at the end of this age, crush all resistance to His perfect will and establish His eternal Kingdom. And for that day we rejoice!
The past two weeks since President Trump’s inauguration, the world, and especially citizens of the United States of America, were given a mere glimpse in the earthly realm of truth prevailing against the powers of darkness and wickedness. This is not to build hope that President Trump is our truth, but to show the truth of Scripture that “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan” (Prov. 29:2). During the last four years under President Joe Biden the large majority of US citizens literally groaned. We saw a corrupt president using his authoritarian powers in many ungodly and overtly wicked ways. But a new day has dawned and with it a much greater sense of truth now prevails under President Trump.
But beware! This is but temporal! In fact, this, what we now see regarding truth and common sense prevailing from the current government, may not endure the next four years. We hope it does, but it may not. In the face of President Trump delivering US citizens from the increasing wickedness led by the Obama/Biden eras, extreme powers of evil and lawlessness are at work to bring to fruition the New World Oder and the seven-year rule of Antichrist. Trump 2.0 is what I also call the church’s reprieve 2.0 and organized church leadership had better take spiritual note. This isn’t the time to breathe a sigh of relief thinking truth has ultimately prevailed. This second reprieve is God’s mercy and grace to the church to get its house in order for what’s just ahead.
Will the organized church seize the moment or continue in its Hollywood-style fake smoke, flashy lights and culturally-approved watered-down preaching? This has signs of a foregone conclusion with Zondervan’s new “NIV UPSIDE-DOWN KINGDOM BIBLE”. No, I’m not kidding! It’s just another sign of our end-times. “Zondervan’s newest NIV study Bible is unlike other Bibles in that it includes elements of theological and gender diversity. As such, Christians should be aware this could be called a DEI Bible. (DEI is an acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion.)” (Source) DEI is what President Donald Trump banned from all federal branches of the US government, and rightly so! The NIV Bible has a long history of changing God’s word.
I remember well when in the late 1980s the Assembly of God Church in which my wife and I raised our three children, the Board of Deacons hired a new senior pastor. Before his arrival the KJV Bible was widely used by most of us in that church. But soon thereafter the new pastor led and encouraged us to purchase and use the NIV Bible. That was back in the day when everyone believed that whatever instruction came from the pastor was as good as gospel. The local Bible book store sold out in record time by people buying the NIV. Personally, I rue the day that I too joined those buying and nearly exclusively using the NIV Bible. It wouldn’t be until the early 2000s that I learned how the 1984 NIV Bible changed and omitted vital texts. Compare also the texts of 1 Cor. 6:9 and Rom. 8:1 of the KJV and NKJV to the NIV. Upon my research I don’t regret the decision to almost exclusively use the KJV and the NKJV Bibles to this very day.
Whether believers are aware of it or not, we’re in a time of great spiritual war, a war of right vs wrong, righteousness vs unrighteousness, light vs darkness, good vs evil, purity vs impurity, of holy and unholy. This war rages in all sectors of life: personal, home, business, social, political and religious. This war will not end until the Lord Jesus Christ returns and establishes His rule and Kingdom on earth, or our physical life here ends at which point “it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27), for “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10). And our Lord Jesus asked this question: “when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). Truth will ultimately prevail, and at the time of the end we will all bear witness to God’s truths in full force.
Before the Judgment Day we must endure technological AI deceptions, for “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:9–12). Jesus Christ warned of our times: “false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand” (Matt. 24:24–25). AI is rapidly developing to the point where human beings and AI will merge to being indistinguishable from one another. It’s in this comingling of man and machine that AI, under direction of the false prophet “coming up out of the earth” (Rev. 13:11), tells “those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed” (Rev. 13:14b–15). And no one will be raptured pre-tribulation!
AI and President Trump’s promised “Golden Age” is of great concern to me and others. This is an area of development that I believe spiritually eludes President Trump, because he has eagerly surrounded himself with AI tech CEOs who will likely be the ones to merge man and machine to the point “to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed”. And know this, the ultimate deception and lie of AI is that mankind must be “upgraded” from his current and limited condition of being made in God’s image, to being all-powerful and “be like God” (Gen. 3:5). It’s the same old rebellion since Adam’s fall, of man desiring to be God in charge of his own destiny.
As this age draws closer to its deceptive end, ultimate truth will be preempted by the ultimate lie and deception for which many search. “For all its dangers, AI-based religion has the potential to make the world a better, richer place. It will give people access to a new source of meaning and spirituality, at a time when many older faiths are losing relevance. It will help them make sense of our era of rapid technological change.” (Source) AI is, in fact, becoming a religion and many already worship it, and it will be that worship of a false god, the false prophet and Antichrist, in tandem that will deceive the world to become one with it and accept its “mark” in the right hand or forehead. A choice will be made by all, take its mark, or be denied the ability to buy and sell.
Marlin J. Yoder
