A sure sign that our end-time world is becoming increasingly possessed by the spirit of antichrist, as the Scripture predicts it will, is our world's ever-growing hostilities toward God's people, both His chosen people—Israel and the Jews—and His elect people—the church and Christians. Just this weekend, for instance, five immigrants—3 Moroccans, an Egyptian and a Syrian—were arrested in Germany for plotting a terrorist attack upon one of the country's popular Christmas Markets, such as the one in Magdeburg, where 6 people were killed and 338 injured in a terrorist attack last December. In addition to this, on Sunday, a horrific and deadly terrorist attack on Australia's Jewish community occurred at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney, which left 16 people dead and 38 others wounded. On the day before, Saturday, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, a mass shooting took place in the classroom of a Jewish professor, who is also an associate professor in Brown's Judaic Studies Department. According to eyewitnesses, the shooter yelled something before opening fire and killing 2 people and wounding 9 others. Although we’ve not been told what the shooter yelled, many suspect that it was “Allah Akbar,” the all too familiar cry that accompanies mass shootings carried out by Islamic terrorists.

According to the Scripture, and contrary to today’s most popular school of eschatology—premillennial dispensationalism—there is no secret rapture, by which the carnal contemporary church will be snatched up into the safety of Heaven before it ever stumps its toe on any end-time tribulation. Neither is there any upcoming worldwide revival spearheaded by 144,000 sealed Jewish evangelists that will sweep the globe in a time when the promised Paraclete—the Holy Spirit of God—will have been removed from our planet. Not only are these popular and propagated beliefs nowhere to be found in Scripture, but they are both preposterous on their face. Still, most evangelicals cling to them as Christian orthodoxy and censure all who disagree with them as heretics. 

What the Bible actually teaches, though spurned by most modern-day evangelicals, because it is so disconcerting, is that just ahead for all of God’s people, both Christians and Jews, are the fiery trials of end-time tribulation, along with their accompanying and unprecedented persecution. Far from being secretly snatched out of it all, Christ’s true church will be tossed into it, so it can be purged, purified, and prepared for Christ’s Second Coming. At the same time, two-thirds of our world’s Jewish population will be wiped out by it, leaving only one third, who are not only symbolized by the 144,000 sealed in the seventh chapter of Revelation, but who also, according to the ancient Prophet Zechariah, will at long last turn to Christ as their Messiah at His Second Coming.

Have you asked yourself what is fueling the ever-increasing furor against Christians and Jews in our fallen world? Furthermore, have you asked yourself what can possibly explain our fallen world’s ever deepening decent into delusion, depravity and derangement? For instance, how can so many people today stake out depraved positions that are diametrically opposed to one another, without any cognizance of the fact that their crazy and corrupt positions are completely contradictory? For example, consider the following.

Democrats, who are becoming increasingly antisemitic, damn those who disagree with them as Nazis, who, of course, are the very epitome of what Democrats themselves are becoming, antisemites. To perfectly illustrate my point, permit me to point your attention to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who represents Minneapolis, Minnesota. Omar is a Muslim from Somalia and a well-known antisemite, who recently accused Stephen Miller, the White House’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, who is also Jewish, of being a Nazi, over Miller’s condemnation of billions of American taxpayer dollars being stolen by Somalian immigrants in Minneapolis and sent to antisemitic Muslim terrorists in Somalia. Now, there’s only two possible explanations for such derangement. It has to be either dementia or demonization, for only a deranged person or a demon possessed one could be this out of touch with reality and continue to believe that they are personally rational and their irrational positions reasonable. 

While it is a frightening fact, it is also an irrefutable one, that our end-time world is becoming increasingly possessed with the spirit of antichrist. Not only is this ominous Biblical prediction proven to be coming to pass by our world’s ever-increasing animosity against the Jewish people and professing Christians, but it is also proven by our world’s downward-spiral into deeper and deeper delusion, depravity and derangement. Still, in spite of it all, the contemporary church sits around complacently waiting to be secretly snatched up into the safety of Heaven before any end-time tribulation breaks out on the earth. Totally unaware of the false security to which it clings, the church is ill-prepared for what’s just ahead; namely, the purifying and refining fires of end-time tribulation, not to mention the Biblically predicted and unprecedented persecution of the perilous times of the last days.