During the 20th and early 21st centuries, AD, Christians have been led to believe that the "end times" predicted in the biblical book of Revelation are happening now. They’ve been told that God’s cycle of time is 7,000 years; that 6,000 years had passed since "creation" in Genesis to the year 2000 AD; that biblical prophesy was fulfilled by the reformation of Israel in 1948; that the Antichrist will surely be revealed as the president of the United States, the pope, Osama Bin Laden, or President Ahmedinejad of Iran; that the "government" intends to put radio frequency identification (RFID) tags into items in commerce, inanimate objects and animals; that these RFID tags are "the mark of the beast" which everyone will have to accept into their own bodies or be denied the ability to function in society or buy food.

We can all see that our world is going downhill faster than at any time since the Dark Ages. This is good news to Christians who believe that end times prophesy is finally being fulfilled and true "believers" will be "raptured" any day now to spend eternity with Christ in heaven. These Christians believe that, according to Matthew 28, it is their holy duty to bring about Christ’s return more quickly by telling all the world that Jesus died on the cross for our salvation and that He will return to begin a one thousand-year reign upon a literal throne in the Middle East and save us from this evil world.

Where did these beliefs, also called "premillennialism," come from if they are not exactly in the Bible? Is it true that the book of Revelation tells Christians that the apocalypse is inevitable and they should embrace it and help to hasten its arrival?

Are we sure the apocalypse of Revelation hasn’t already happened?

Bible researcher Don K. Preston, in his book, Who is This Babylon? (1999), takes a look at Revelation that is completely different than the premillennialist point of view. He points out that, while today’s religious world takes for granted that Revelation was written about 95 or 96 AD, the dominant view of 19th century Bible scholars was that it was written prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Using detailed scriptural references, Preston compares the prophesies of Isaiah, Joel and Daniel in the Old Testament and of Jesus in Luke 21 and Matthew 24. He then compares those Scriptures to the Apostle John’s book of Revelation. According to Preston and Dr. F. LaGard Smith, compiler and commentator for Guideposts’ The Daily Bible, most biblical theorists believe that the prophesies of Daniel refer to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Historically, most biblical scholars also concur that Matthew 24 refers to the same event.

Daniel was written 500 years before Christ and speaks of an event in the "distant future" while Matthew, Luke and Revelation speak of an event that is "imminent" (going to happen "before the end of this [Jesus’] generation"). But Christians today are taught that the events of Revelation have not yet happened.

In 1813, David Bogue, father of the London Missionary Society, described premillennialism as an oddity of church history. At that time and until at least 1859, "postmillennialism," the belief that Armageddon already happened and Christ would come after the millennium, was the dominant end-times theory since the Reformation, claimed Jack Van Deventer, in his article, "The Dispensational Origins of Modern Premillennialism and John Nelson Darby" (2007).

"The idea that we are living in the last days and that the world is going to be destroyed and Jesus Christ is going to come any minute has only been around in the United States for 200 years." (The American Free Press [8-19-02], "Arms profiteers, Warmongers, Media, Exploiting ‘Last Days’ Christians all the way to the Bank").

From whence did "the Rapture" come?

"The shift away from historic Christianity stemmed from a novel approach to Bible interpretation called ‘dispensationalism’ which was developed in the 1830s and popularized with the 1909 publication of the Scofield Reference Bible," wrote Van Deventer.

Time magazine’s senior religion writer David van Biema in "The End: How it Got That Way" (7-01-02), tells of the "rapture" scheme of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), who is considered the father of dispensationalism. Darby claimed that biblical history is best understood in light of seven distinct dispensations or "eras" of God’s dealings with man as discerned from the Bible, beginning with creation and ending with the millennium. According to wikipedia, dispensationalist beliefs about the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel put dispensationalists at the forefront of Christian Zionism because "God is able to graft [the Jews] in again." They believe that, in His grace, He will do so according to their understanding of Old Testament prophecy to bless a remnant of Israel and to fulfill all the promises made to the genetic seed of Abraham.

According to Van Deventer, Darby was a British lawyer-turned-disillusioned minister whose doubts concerning the scriptural authority for the institutional church led him to leave it and find fellowship with a small group of brethren in Plymouth, England.

But, by 1836, Darby had invented a doctrine claiming there were not one, but two "second comings" of Christ, an idea that was immediately challenged as unbiblical by other members of the Plymouth Brethren. Also challenged were his assertions concerning the premillennial return of Christ and the rapture of the church. Darby based his theory on a loose translation of 1 Thess. 4:17, which doesn’t exactly say Christians will be raptured. It reads, "The Lord himself will descend with a shout….and we which are alive shall be caught up with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord".

Preston, in his "Special Study: Paul and the Apocalypse," wrote that in Luke 21:22, Jesus said, "These be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled."

I Thess. 4:15 shows that Paul was speaking to the Thessalonians, as he wrote, "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, we which are alive and remain….shall be caught up."

Jesus’ prophesies and those of the Old Testament referred exclusively to the Jews of that day, for whom the resurrection was extremely important, not to the Gentiles at some indistinct future time.

Darby attempted a resolution to his dilemma with the brethren by distinguishing between Scripture intended for the church and Scripture intended for Israel. "Darby’s difficulty was solved by assuming that the Gospels were addressed partly to Jews and partly to Christians," wrote Van Deventer.

"Thus," Van Deventer observed, "the foundation of dispensationalism was born out of Darby’s attempt to justify his newly fabricated rapture theory with the Bible."

Darby visited the U.S. several times after the civil war and, according to van Biema, was pastored here by Cyrus I. Scofield (1843-1921), a Congregationalist minister with a checkered reputation. Even though Darby’s rapture theory was so tenuous that he had lingering doubts about it as late as 1845, in 1865 he introduced American Christians to this radical new concept, positioning it at the very beginning of the "tribulation," sparing "true believers" the end-times horror left to nonbelievers and the doctrinally misled.

What is the Tribulation?

In the same July, 2002 edition of Time, in an expose by Kelly Sellers promoting the latest installment in Tim La Haye’s Left Behind series, "The Remnant," the "tribulation" in Matthew 24:29, is referred to with a capital "T." Rather than recognizing typical metaphorical biblical prophesy of "the sun being darkened and the moon not giving light," Sellers calls it, "A period of seven years of disaster that will end with Christ’s defeat of evil at Armageddon."

According to Bible commentator Steve Walburg, in his book "End Time Delusions," this "Tribulation" timeline is an absurd interpretation of Daniel’s reference to 70 weeks (Daniel 9:24-27) which is finalized in verse 27 with the prophecy, "And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease."

In the Old Testament "70 weeks" actually means 70 times seven because the Hebrew word for "week" is "shabua" (which literally means a time period of "seven"), or 490 years, as that is how time was kept from the days of Moses (Jubilees ca.1445 BC, Lev. 25:8-10).

"He" who caused "…the sacrifice….to cease" could only be in reference to Jesus when, after 3 1/2 years of ministry (midweek) he died on the cross, the ultimate sacrifice.

"The seventy weeks of Daniel certainly ended many centuries ago. We are not to look to the future for the fulfillment of these predictions," wrote Presbyterian writer Samuel Cassels in his 1846 book, Christ and Antichrist.

"One would think the people [the Jews] among whom [these events] occurred, could not possibly have misapplied the prophecy," Cassels continued.

Daniel 9:24-27 referred to the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of Prince Titus in 70 AD. His "desolations" and the "tribulation" in Matthew 24:29 refer to the judgment of Judah (part of Israel) for persecuting the saints. It has nothing to do with the "Tribulation" described in La Haye’s books.

(Israel split into two countries after King Solomon died in 931 BC: Ten tribes became "Israel" and the two tribes of Benjamin and Judah became "Judah." Jerusalem was in Judah. King David and, therefore, Jesus, were both descendants of Judah).

What is the Antichrist?

The term "antichrist" is only listed in the Bible three times, in the first two letters of the Apostle John—also the presumed author of Revelation—where he tells his followers that, "…even now there are many antichrists; whereby we know it is the last time (I John 2:18)," and I John 4:3, similar to II John:7, which states "…many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus is come…this is a deceiver and an antichrist."

Yet, secular writers avidly portray the Antichrist as a specific person, an evil figure who will plague the world and eventually be defeated by Christ in the Battle of Armageddon. This theory was also put forth by Sellers in her Time article on La Haye, that before the Antichrist comes to rule the earth, believing Christians will be raptured into heaven to watch the destruction of the planet by evil from the side of Jesus in heaven.

As Robert Dreyfuss from Rolling Stone magazine told the story in his article "Reverend Doomsday" (01-28-04) about La Haye, a follower of Jerry Falwell as well as Scofield, and a political activist who promoted George W. Bush, the "bad guys" in the books are the same ones politically active members of the Christian right and their allies publicly denounce and demonize—The United Nations, Europeans, Russia, Iraq, Muslims, the media, liberals, freethinkers and international bankers, all of whom will team up with the Antichrist, who will take the helm at the UN and move its headquarters to Babylon, Iraq. The Tribulation follows in which God visits unspeakable plagues on the Earth amid a climactic worldwide battle waged by a band of new believers against Satan and the Antichrist. The "good guys," are Christian believers, Israel, and a phalanx of 144,000 Jews who accept Jesus.

Prominent Christian leaders condemned this story as "unscholarly" and a "perversion" of the Bible. Plus, the story makes no logical sense in contemporary political reality since the UN, international bankers and Israel have been inextricably connected since 1948. Plus, Babylon is, at this time, a ruins.

Tim La Haye’s Left Behind series is shaped by the 1909 Scofield Reference Bible.

According to PoweredbyChrist.homestead.com and others, Scofield is a story in himself. His behind-the-scenes handlers included 33rd degree Freemason George Bannerman Dealey, owner of the Dallas Morning News, the Rothschild-owned Oxford Press which published his Bible, noted Zionist Dr. William Eugene Blackstone who pushed his theories with the help of the Moody Bible Institute and, of course Darby, with his fundamental assumption that things on earth would progressively worsen until the Antichrist, also known as "the Beast," arose.

What about the Christians’ biblically mandated allegiance to Israel?

The popularity of dispensationalism and its corresponding "rapture" theory has declined sharply since the 1970s due to notorious corruption in evangelical organizations and because many of today’s Christians recognize the "rapture" is not in the Bible. However, they still believe Christians are bound by the prophesy of Balaam in Numbers 24:9 and the blessing of Isaac in Genesis 27:29 concerning Israel, which reads, "Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee."

Of all the prophesies in the Bible used by today’s religious orders to subdue the Christians, Numbers 24:9 is up there with Romans 13 as among the most powerful. Bible-reading Christians are led to believe they must back Israel at any cost or be cursed by God.

However, after the curse of Balaam, God told Moses that if Israel did not keep His commands, stipulations and decrees, He would destroy them from the face of the land (Deut 6:15-16), which he has done twice—In 585 BC and again in 70 AD.

Who (or what) is the "state" of Israel: The Rothschild connection

The current Armageddon plot was hatched in the late 18th century by a Khazarian, or "Ashkenazi" Jew, whose family had migrated to Germany from the area by the Caspian Sea now called Georgia. His name was Mayer Amschel Bauer (1744-1812), which he changed to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, ("Rot," meaning "Red," and "Schild," meaning "Sign") after the red hexagram which his father, a moneylender, placed over the door of his bank in Frankfurt, Germany. The red hexagram geometrically and numerically translates into the number 666. Rothschild claimed to be Jewish because the Khazars, descendents of Noah’s youngest son Japheth (as opposed to being descendants of Abraham, a descendent of Noah’s oldest son Shem), had converted to the Jewish faith by sovereign edict in AD 740. That the Rothschilds were genetically unrelated to the biblical Jews was inconsequential to them since they intended to redefine Bible prophecy to better serve their long-term economic goals.

Rothschild became associated with the court of Prince William IX of Hesse-Hanau, one of the richest royal houses in Europe and quickly discovered that loaning money to governments and royalty is more profitable than loaning to commoners, as the loans are bigger and secured by the nation’s taxes and resource wealth.

In 1770, Rothschild drew up plans for the creation of the Illuminati, which Dr. Henry Makow in his book Illuminati: The Cult that Hijacked the World (2008) (see at page 4), tells us is based upon the Talmud (a book of interpretations of the Rabbinical [Pharisee] Jews that is full of contempt for non-Jews) and the Cabala, the basis of modern occultism, sex worship, violence, fear and the "New Age Movement" that has engulfed the world. As a result of this influence, the arc of Western Civilization has gone from "ascent"—belief in God—focused on the higher centers of love, joy, purity and selflessness, to descent—belief in Satan—focused on the lower centers of consciousness like those of power, wealth and physical gratification. The apex was called the "Enlightenment," when the "Illuminated ones"—a Luciferian term meaning "keepers of the light"—took over for God. Typical of Satan, decline into moral darkness is represented as light.

In 1776 Adam Weishaupt, who wrote, "The Lodge shall be our nursery," was appointed to reorganize the Illuminati which was merged with Freemasonry in 1782. According to Andre Krylienko (The Red Thread, 1997) the merger was consecrated "to enlist non-Jews consciously or unconsciously in the service of Jewry."

Within the lodge system, corruptible non-Jews would be let in on the true agenda and allowed to rise in ranks; those not suited for ruthlessness would remain in the Masonic lodge as "useful idiots"—innocents who cannot conceive they’ve been betrayed, who maintain the benevolent and socially-concerned facade of the lodge while attacking anyone who dares question the "cause."

TO BE CONTINUED...