I really enjoyed this one, the linking of various cultural elements and the basis of our culture in Christ after his birth in comparison to how the world thought before his birth, death, and resurrection.
This is excellent. So many people are looking at the end of this age of Pisces right now and wondering what’s next? Utopia, armageddon, both or neither? The acceleration of the rate of civilizational decay is neck-snapping these days. Thanks for some long-term perspective.
The 20th century was a central bank disaster. All the wars followed the 1913 formation of the American central bank. What is taking place today is the fulfillment of what the Balfour Declaration initiated. The Iran Israel war.
"We do not live in an animistic age focused on the flow of seasons and the cyclic nature of all things. Men may have lived that way once, but we do not."
Isn't this precisely our mistake? We have abandoned the harmony of God's creation, and instead placed our faith in our own creations. We are obsessed with collapse because, deep down, we all know this to be true: we are not smart enough to replace God.
I am shocked by what appears to be a very nasty strain of antisemitism on this site. Not from Andrew, the founder and author whose writings I admire, but from some commenters who seem to hate Israel and the Jewish people, even though Jesus is a Jew and God has never revoked His covenant with the Jewish people. We can be proud of and loyal to our own heritage, whilst also being grateful to those who help us to preserve it, in this case, Israel. Iran and its terrorist spawn wish to kill Christians like us. They don't care about our heritage. The Jews are our elder brothers in the faith. If you hate them you hate the blood family of Our Lord and His apostles, His mother and all the prophets who foresaw His coming. Shame on you. I no longer wish to subscribe to this newsletter, much as I enjoy reading Andrew's posts, because of the insane and ignorant hatred that has become apparent here. Jesus will surely judge you severely for that.
Christ fulfilled the old covenant and gave us the new and final covenant, which the jews reject. They are a cursed people of their own volition and will find nothing but hellfire if they do not repent and embrace Christ.
A deep and complex post, and I'm not sure I fully understand all you are saying here. I do agree that we seem to be approaching the end of the world, and shortly after I read your post I saw and read about Israel's breathtaking attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The world would end very quickly if Iran were to attain the atomic bomb, and they were getting very, very close to doing just that. So I take my hat off to the brave Israelis for doing a huge favour to the West.
Iran's theology calls for the State of Israel to be destroyed and for all Jews to be killed, followed by the elimination of Christians, because only then will the Mahdi return. Clearly, this person is neither Jesus nor the Jewish Messiah. And at the same time, Israeli rabbis are forecasting the imminent return of their Messiah. When the Messiah does come - whenever that may be - we will surely see that He and Jesus are one and the same, while the Mahdi is consigned to the depths of Hell.
Yet I don't agree that we can now discuss Hitler and WW2 as a purely historical event, because to me that leader was subject to the very same delusions that now grip so many Muslims. Indeed, Hitler was a great friend of the Mufti of Jerusalem and they discussed the best ways each of them had found to get rid of Jews. I hope I have not offended anyone with this comment, because such was not my intention, but Christians and Jews are brothers and sisters while unfortunately the so-called "religion of peace" is not part of our heritage. I've known some excellent Sufis, both in the UK and in the USA, who have worked diligently for peace and who fully accept Christians and Jews into their fellowship, but when we look at militant Islam and the Iranian regime, they are bent on meting out death and destruction to anyone not of their faith. And they must be stopped. And there are many - perhaps most - Muslims, who are not militant and who do not support the killing of Jews and Christians but who see Iran as the oppressor, who agree with this view.
In the best case scenario we would see huge conversions among the Muslim world to follow Christ - and in some places this seems to be happening.
And I do feel that very soon the whole world order will change, hopefully not into whatever hell the New World Order has in mind to subject us to, but with the coming of the Kingdom of Christ Who will finally come to reign. I pray that this happens soon.
Iran were weeks away from a nuclear bomb, and that would have started world War 3. Israel would have been destroyed and the West turned into a nuclear desert. And yes, the Jewish Messiah is none other than Jesus Christ, as the Bible makes clear. "They will look on the One whom they had pierced" and realize what they had done to Him. They will repent and be saved, taken into the Kingdom together with us, the Christians who have known Him and are saved by Him. "By his stripes we are healed", Isaiah tells us, which indicates that the Jews will know that Christ bore the wounds that were due to them, as to all of us, as punishment for sin. He took our sin upon Himself so that we would have a chance to be redeemed - and that applies to the Jews as much as to us. Also to believing Muslims, of course, but the Mahdi is not the Saviour of anyone, and is utterly repugnant to Christians, Jews and everyone not an Islamist.
Don't forget that Christ called to His Father from the cross, imploring that He should forgive them, "for they know not what they do". If Jesus Christ forgave them, so must we.
I have just finished a very interesting book, Melanie Phillips's "The Builder's Stone", which points to the connection between Judaism and Christianity, the principles on which Western civilization is founded. If we lose this connection - as is happening now - and forsake Christ, the West will quickly be destroyed. There is not much time left.
If Iran had a nuclear bomb nobody would be safe. Israel has done the West a huge favour. Iran is behind almost all Islamist terror attacks throughout the world. When Jesus said we should turn the other cheek he was not making a foreign policy statement - and he told us to be as wise as serpents.
I think I have found some quite nasty antisemitism on this site. We can love our own heritage without hating anyone else, but we must all unite against the common enemy that would destroy Christians and Jews alike. The slogan on Hamas banners and posters throughout the Islamic world is, "First we will come for the Saturday people - and then the Sunday people". Please direct your enmity towards the entity that truly hates Christians.
> And if we have run out of stories to tell, what does that mean?
One of the old stories will get recycled. I think the story will be a slave-owning society, like in the bronze age, but worse. Both the left and the right, in USA, seem to be pushing for it. Here's a perspective on how the right in USA is trying to push for a slave-owning society (in case it isn't obvious from right-wingers on Substack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-sNSjS8cq0
I also have a quibble on the view on Antichrist you give here. The view you give belives people will flock to Antichrist believing him to be Christ. But this doesn't align. If people flock to what they belive is Christ, but who turns out to be Antichrist, then people are not in the wrong. No evil is commited. People are seeking God and they do whatever their conscience tells them to be good. Those people are inherently good. No (mortal) sin is commited.
But as a counter-argument, I'll refer to Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39, where a battle is prophesised between Gog and Magog on one side and Israel on the other. I understand this refers to the end of the world, as there is a large number of parallels between the prophecies and the Book of Revelation. Having said that, I'll refer to a particular verse to show the evil will be obvious: Ezekiel 38:13 "Sheba and Dedan, the merchants of Tarshish and all her young lions shall ask you: "Is it for plunder that you have come? Is it for pillage that you have summoned your horde, to carry off silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to seize much plunder?"" As Gog sets off to attack Israel, neutral parties are clearly seeing the action is evil. Gog himself knows the action is evil, as shown in the verses preceding this one. There's a slight wrinke in the fact prophecy says God will make Gog attack Israel (Ezekiel 38:4,17). Also, Revelation 17:17 implies evil kings (leaders) aren't acting out of their own free will (and are therefore not culpable). Nonetheless, that's the leaders (and I'll get back to it). What about the rest? Because of Ezekiel 38:13, we know the evil of the attack is clear and obvious.
And I need to cover an additional point. Revelation, and others, say people will be "seduced", or tricked or something else of the sort. But tricked people are not culpable. Say you are told pressing a button will net you $100. You press it and an innocent bystander gets killed instead. You got tricked, the button actually operates the killing machine. Are you culpable? Did you do evil? Have you commited a sin? No, you are innocent. Then how will the evil peoples of the end times be culpable - for they are culpable, as evidenced by comparing Revelation 20:15 with 13:8. Actually, right now I need to stop and specify. Not all Christians belive that damnation is merited. Some, such as Calvinists, belive damnation is preordained. They belive God created some people and preordained them to eternal damnation. The free will of these people is irrelevant. There is nothing they can do, or that anybody at all can do, to save these people. Such is the belief of Calvinists and other that belive in predetermination. But other Christians, among them Catholics, belive damnation - and also salvation - is only after a free decision made by a human. Depending on the choice a human makes, the human gets either damned or saved, AND THE CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCES ARE KNOWN to the human making the choice at the time the choice is made. God is big on informed consent, in the Catholic opinion. This can all be argued from, for example, Sirach 15:11-20.
So how are the "seduced"? Suppose you live in a world God created, but you don't want anything to do with God. Suppose that's your free decision, that you make with full understanding and consent. But you can't bring your decision to fruition, your hands aren't strong enough. And now the seduction: suppose a god comes and shows you a way to continue existing, indefinitely, in a pocket universe free from God The Creator. Because I'm pretty sure that's what Lucifer came up with, back in "Garden of Eden". I'm pretty sure he figured out a way to live without God, and without succumbing to a sort of a metaphysical heat death of the Universe. Now, back then God moved the world so the devil's OG plan didn't work, but since he's so smart he'll probably be able to figure out a new plan. And he can present it to people not wanting to be living with God forever. And the plan will be perfect, and without fail. Accepting the plan is culpable. And the seduction is in the fact God The Creator can and will change the axioms of Creation at any moment, rendering any plan moot in an instant. The *seduction* is in forgetting that little detail.
One last thing: the evil of Gog. Ezekiel makes it rather obvious God is making Gog do things. But it's possible God is merely channeling Gog's evil. Gog may have decided to do evil, and then God made sure the evil will take on a particular form. After all, in the translation I have, the line 38:4 starts "I will lure you and put a bit into your mouth, I will bring out you and all your military ...". What is a bit for? :)
> very few people that do evil think that they are.
I presume the ending is intented to be "that they are evil." And I agree. People don't think of themselves as evil. "I'm a good person, it's just that sometimes I have to do things I don't agree with (to survive in this harsh world)." Here, "things I don't agree with" is code for "evil things". People try to avoid describing themselves or their acts as evil if there is any other way of describing them. So, for example, women who have abortions sometimes don't refer to the act as an "abortion", instead they refer to it as a "cleaning". People do these things in order to maintain a positive opinion of themselves.
But that's not what's at issue. The question isn't if people think of themselves as evil or not, the question is are they willingly and knowingly doing evil.
Suppose you want to hang out with some cool guys. And they tell you that in order to hang out with them, you have to beat up somebody. They'll help you, of course, but you need to break the guy's nose. The guy is just a completely innocent person, didn't slight anyone. You do it. Are you evil? Did you do evil? The answers to those two questions don't have to be the same.
We can play with the parameters of the example all we want, but at the end of the day, I expect you'll agree that good people can and do evil things. After all, there's a selection of proverbs and idioms that warn against just such a thing. "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." That's a derivative of "ends justify the means", which is itself normally invoked sarcastically. Here's another one: "you can't do evil and expect good to come out".
As for the thing you quoted, the sense it makes is that if people seek Christ but it ends up the thing they're following is actually Antichrist, they haven't done wrong. Suppose you court a girl, chase her for weeks, but then it turns out it's actually a trans-woman. Does that mean you want to date trans-women? Or was it just a case of the falibility of human senses and an epistemological failure? You weren't able to gain complete knowledge of the matter until it was too late. Same thing if people follow what they think is Christ but is actually Antichrist. It's an epistemological failure, not a moral failure. They aren't willingly, knowingly, doing evil. Unlike all the good people who, sometimes, and with regret in their heart, do an evil thing or two.
"We are reaching a point where Hitler and WW2 can be discussed as historical events like anything else." While sharing this on the MINDS platform, in desperation, "discussed" became »DISCARDED¸
hope you don't mind my edit.
°Cherishº is the new love, be well. & I wrote an introductory rant about *if the word ax is used, i too will own the use -- even defending the tool over the wielder*
¢May God nod to ward thee & thine!$ [insert meme here]
I really enjoyed this one, the linking of various cultural elements and the basis of our culture in Christ after his birth in comparison to how the world thought before his birth, death, and resurrection.
I love reading these whenever you post. Good work, God bless.
This is excellent. So many people are looking at the end of this age of Pisces right now and wondering what’s next? Utopia, armageddon, both or neither? The acceleration of the rate of civilizational decay is neck-snapping these days. Thanks for some long-term perspective.
The World is always 'ending'...but never quite reaching 'the end'.
The World is always 'renewing'...but never quite 'finally renewed'.
The 20th century was a central bank disaster. All the wars followed the 1913 formation of the American central bank. What is taking place today is the fulfillment of what the Balfour Declaration initiated. The Iran Israel war.
Dunno that it's our stories that need straightening so much as our hearts.
Pray. Go to confession. Divest yourself of this world's things.
That's always been the answer.
"We do not live in an animistic age focused on the flow of seasons and the cyclic nature of all things. Men may have lived that way once, but we do not."
Isn't this precisely our mistake? We have abandoned the harmony of God's creation, and instead placed our faith in our own creations. We are obsessed with collapse because, deep down, we all know this to be true: we are not smart enough to replace God.
Everyone, watch messiah 2030 series on YT. Awesome work here.
I am shocked by what appears to be a very nasty strain of antisemitism on this site. Not from Andrew, the founder and author whose writings I admire, but from some commenters who seem to hate Israel and the Jewish people, even though Jesus is a Jew and God has never revoked His covenant with the Jewish people. We can be proud of and loyal to our own heritage, whilst also being grateful to those who help us to preserve it, in this case, Israel. Iran and its terrorist spawn wish to kill Christians like us. They don't care about our heritage. The Jews are our elder brothers in the faith. If you hate them you hate the blood family of Our Lord and His apostles, His mother and all the prophets who foresaw His coming. Shame on you. I no longer wish to subscribe to this newsletter, much as I enjoy reading Andrew's posts, because of the insane and ignorant hatred that has become apparent here. Jesus will surely judge you severely for that.
TL;DR: Synagogue of Satan.
Christ fulfilled the old covenant and gave us the new and final covenant, which the jews reject. They are a cursed people of their own volition and will find nothing but hellfire if they do not repent and embrace Christ.
A deep and complex post, and I'm not sure I fully understand all you are saying here. I do agree that we seem to be approaching the end of the world, and shortly after I read your post I saw and read about Israel's breathtaking attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The world would end very quickly if Iran were to attain the atomic bomb, and they were getting very, very close to doing just that. So I take my hat off to the brave Israelis for doing a huge favour to the West.
Iran's theology calls for the State of Israel to be destroyed and for all Jews to be killed, followed by the elimination of Christians, because only then will the Mahdi return. Clearly, this person is neither Jesus nor the Jewish Messiah. And at the same time, Israeli rabbis are forecasting the imminent return of their Messiah. When the Messiah does come - whenever that may be - we will surely see that He and Jesus are one and the same, while the Mahdi is consigned to the depths of Hell.
Yet I don't agree that we can now discuss Hitler and WW2 as a purely historical event, because to me that leader was subject to the very same delusions that now grip so many Muslims. Indeed, Hitler was a great friend of the Mufti of Jerusalem and they discussed the best ways each of them had found to get rid of Jews. I hope I have not offended anyone with this comment, because such was not my intention, but Christians and Jews are brothers and sisters while unfortunately the so-called "religion of peace" is not part of our heritage. I've known some excellent Sufis, both in the UK and in the USA, who have worked diligently for peace and who fully accept Christians and Jews into their fellowship, but when we look at militant Islam and the Iranian regime, they are bent on meting out death and destruction to anyone not of their faith. And they must be stopped. And there are many - perhaps most - Muslims, who are not militant and who do not support the killing of Jews and Christians but who see Iran as the oppressor, who agree with this view.
In the best case scenario we would see huge conversions among the Muslim world to follow Christ - and in some places this seems to be happening.
And I do feel that very soon the whole world order will change, hopefully not into whatever hell the New World Order has in mind to subject us to, but with the coming of the Kingdom of Christ Who will finally come to reign. I pray that this happens soon.
“I take my hat off to the brave Israelis for doing a huge favor to the west”
“We will surely see that he and Jesus are one and the same”
You can’t be serious bro
Iran were weeks away from a nuclear bomb, and that would have started world War 3. Israel would have been destroyed and the West turned into a nuclear desert. And yes, the Jewish Messiah is none other than Jesus Christ, as the Bible makes clear. "They will look on the One whom they had pierced" and realize what they had done to Him. They will repent and be saved, taken into the Kingdom together with us, the Christians who have known Him and are saved by Him. "By his stripes we are healed", Isaiah tells us, which indicates that the Jews will know that Christ bore the wounds that were due to them, as to all of us, as punishment for sin. He took our sin upon Himself so that we would have a chance to be redeemed - and that applies to the Jews as much as to us. Also to believing Muslims, of course, but the Mahdi is not the Saviour of anyone, and is utterly repugnant to Christians, Jews and everyone not an Islamist.
Don't forget that Christ called to His Father from the cross, imploring that He should forgive them, "for they know not what they do". If Jesus Christ forgave them, so must we.
I have just finished a very interesting book, Melanie Phillips's "The Builder's Stone", which points to the connection between Judaism and Christianity, the principles on which Western civilization is founded. If we lose this connection - as is happening now - and forsake Christ, the West will quickly be destroyed. There is not much time left.
Yeah this the type of evangelical thinking that will get you fooled by the Antichrist.
“They would have started world war 3! We had to attack first!” Is insane thinking.
If Iran had a nuclear bomb nobody would be safe. Israel has done the West a huge favour. Iran is behind almost all Islamist terror attacks throughout the world. When Jesus said we should turn the other cheek he was not making a foreign policy statement - and he told us to be as wise as serpents.
“Jesus told me to bomb iran and gaza”
I think I have found some quite nasty antisemitism on this site. We can love our own heritage without hating anyone else, but we must all unite against the common enemy that would destroy Christians and Jews alike. The slogan on Hamas banners and posters throughout the Islamic world is, "First we will come for the Saturday people - and then the Sunday people". Please direct your enmity towards the entity that truly hates Christians.
Hi!
> And if we have run out of stories to tell, what does that mean?
One of the old stories will get recycled. I think the story will be a slave-owning society, like in the bronze age, but worse. Both the left and the right, in USA, seem to be pushing for it. Here's a perspective on how the right in USA is trying to push for a slave-owning society (in case it isn't obvious from right-wingers on Substack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-sNSjS8cq0
I also have a quibble on the view on Antichrist you give here. The view you give belives people will flock to Antichrist believing him to be Christ. But this doesn't align. If people flock to what they belive is Christ, but who turns out to be Antichrist, then people are not in the wrong. No evil is commited. People are seeking God and they do whatever their conscience tells them to be good. Those people are inherently good. No (mortal) sin is commited.
But as a counter-argument, I'll refer to Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39, where a battle is prophesised between Gog and Magog on one side and Israel on the other. I understand this refers to the end of the world, as there is a large number of parallels between the prophecies and the Book of Revelation. Having said that, I'll refer to a particular verse to show the evil will be obvious: Ezekiel 38:13 "Sheba and Dedan, the merchants of Tarshish and all her young lions shall ask you: "Is it for plunder that you have come? Is it for pillage that you have summoned your horde, to carry off silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to seize much plunder?"" As Gog sets off to attack Israel, neutral parties are clearly seeing the action is evil. Gog himself knows the action is evil, as shown in the verses preceding this one. There's a slight wrinke in the fact prophecy says God will make Gog attack Israel (Ezekiel 38:4,17). Also, Revelation 17:17 implies evil kings (leaders) aren't acting out of their own free will (and are therefore not culpable). Nonetheless, that's the leaders (and I'll get back to it). What about the rest? Because of Ezekiel 38:13, we know the evil of the attack is clear and obvious.
And I need to cover an additional point. Revelation, and others, say people will be "seduced", or tricked or something else of the sort. But tricked people are not culpable. Say you are told pressing a button will net you $100. You press it and an innocent bystander gets killed instead. You got tricked, the button actually operates the killing machine. Are you culpable? Did you do evil? Have you commited a sin? No, you are innocent. Then how will the evil peoples of the end times be culpable - for they are culpable, as evidenced by comparing Revelation 20:15 with 13:8. Actually, right now I need to stop and specify. Not all Christians belive that damnation is merited. Some, such as Calvinists, belive damnation is preordained. They belive God created some people and preordained them to eternal damnation. The free will of these people is irrelevant. There is nothing they can do, or that anybody at all can do, to save these people. Such is the belief of Calvinists and other that belive in predetermination. But other Christians, among them Catholics, belive damnation - and also salvation - is only after a free decision made by a human. Depending on the choice a human makes, the human gets either damned or saved, AND THE CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCES ARE KNOWN to the human making the choice at the time the choice is made. God is big on informed consent, in the Catholic opinion. This can all be argued from, for example, Sirach 15:11-20.
So how are the "seduced"? Suppose you live in a world God created, but you don't want anything to do with God. Suppose that's your free decision, that you make with full understanding and consent. But you can't bring your decision to fruition, your hands aren't strong enough. And now the seduction: suppose a god comes and shows you a way to continue existing, indefinitely, in a pocket universe free from God The Creator. Because I'm pretty sure that's what Lucifer came up with, back in "Garden of Eden". I'm pretty sure he figured out a way to live without God, and without succumbing to a sort of a metaphysical heat death of the Universe. Now, back then God moved the world so the devil's OG plan didn't work, but since he's so smart he'll probably be able to figure out a new plan. And he can present it to people not wanting to be living with God forever. And the plan will be perfect, and without fail. Accepting the plan is culpable. And the seduction is in the fact God The Creator can and will change the axioms of Creation at any moment, rendering any plan moot in an instant. The *seduction* is in forgetting that little detail.
One last thing: the evil of Gog. Ezekiel makes it rather obvious God is making Gog do things. But it's possible God is merely channeling Gog's evil. Gog may have decided to do evil, and then God made sure the evil will take on a particular form. After all, in the translation I have, the line 38:4 starts "I will lure you and put a bit into your mouth, I will bring out you and all your military ...". What is a bit for? :)
“If people flock to what they believe is Christ, but who turns out to be Antichrist, then people are not in the wrong”
This makes no sense, very few people that do evil think that they are. This is no different
It makes sense. But first,
> very few people that do evil think that they are.
I presume the ending is intented to be "that they are evil." And I agree. People don't think of themselves as evil. "I'm a good person, it's just that sometimes I have to do things I don't agree with (to survive in this harsh world)." Here, "things I don't agree with" is code for "evil things". People try to avoid describing themselves or their acts as evil if there is any other way of describing them. So, for example, women who have abortions sometimes don't refer to the act as an "abortion", instead they refer to it as a "cleaning". People do these things in order to maintain a positive opinion of themselves.
But that's not what's at issue. The question isn't if people think of themselves as evil or not, the question is are they willingly and knowingly doing evil.
Suppose you want to hang out with some cool guys. And they tell you that in order to hang out with them, you have to beat up somebody. They'll help you, of course, but you need to break the guy's nose. The guy is just a completely innocent person, didn't slight anyone. You do it. Are you evil? Did you do evil? The answers to those two questions don't have to be the same.
We can play with the parameters of the example all we want, but at the end of the day, I expect you'll agree that good people can and do evil things. After all, there's a selection of proverbs and idioms that warn against just such a thing. "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." That's a derivative of "ends justify the means", which is itself normally invoked sarcastically. Here's another one: "you can't do evil and expect good to come out".
As for the thing you quoted, the sense it makes is that if people seek Christ but it ends up the thing they're following is actually Antichrist, they haven't done wrong. Suppose you court a girl, chase her for weeks, but then it turns out it's actually a trans-woman. Does that mean you want to date trans-women? Or was it just a case of the falibility of human senses and an epistemological failure? You weren't able to gain complete knowledge of the matter until it was too late. Same thing if people follow what they think is Christ but is actually Antichrist. It's an epistemological failure, not a moral failure. They aren't willingly, knowingly, doing evil. Unlike all the good people who, sometimes, and with regret in their heart, do an evil thing or two.
P.S. Second to Thessalonians 2:10-12
"We are reaching a point where Hitler and WW2 can be discussed as historical events like anything else." While sharing this on the MINDS platform, in desperation, "discussed" became »DISCARDED¸
hope you don't mind my edit.
°Cherishº is the new love, be well. & I wrote an introductory rant about *if the word ax is used, i too will own the use -- even defending the tool over the wielder*
¢May God nod to ward thee & thine!$ [insert meme here]