ADAM MAARSCHALK

Growing up under Christian Zionist and dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ist teach­ings, I took for grant­ed that the fol­low­ing nar­ra­tive that was pre­sent­ed to me was the cor­rect one:

The Jewish peo­ple in Israel are direct descen­dants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and God restored them to their land as a nation in 1948 in ful­fill­ment of Bible prophe­cy. The Palestinians, on the oth­er hand, are new­ly-arrived Arabs, main­ly from Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, who flood­ed the land when they saw the Jews begin­ning to come back from Russia, Europe, and elsewhere.

Although it’s been a num­ber of years since I learned that this nar­ra­tive is far from cor­rect, more recent­ly I’ve learned some details that, if true, take this dis­tor­tion to the next lev­el. They show the claims of Christian Zionism and dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ism to be even fur­ther off-base, not only Biblically but also in terms of history.

I recent­ly read an arti­cle writ­ten by Schlomo Sand, an Israeli his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Tel Aviv University, whose par­ents were Polish Jewish sur­vivors of the Holocaust. I don’t agree with Sand’s stance on the Old Testament, but he makes some inter­est­ing state­ments regard­ing the inhab­i­tants of Palestine in the cen­turies pri­or to Israel becom­ing a nation in 1948:

“[After Jerusalem’s destruc­tion in 70 AD], apart from enslaved pris­on­ers, the pop­u­la­tion of Judea con­tin­ued to live on their lands, even after the destruc­tion of the sec­ond tem­ple. Some con­vert­ed to Christianity in the 4^th cen­tu­ry, while the major­i­ty embraced Islam dur­ing the 7^th cen­tu­ry Arab conquest.

Most Zionist thinkers were aware of this: Yitzhak Ben Zvi, lat­er pres­i­dent of Israel, and David Ben Gurion, its first prime min­is­ter, accept­ed it as late as 1929, the year of the great Palestinian revolt. Both stat­ed on sev­er­al occa­sions that the peas­ants of Palestine were the descen­dants of the inhab­i­tants of ancient Judea.“

[See David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi, Eretz Israel in the past and present, 1918 (in Yiddish), and Jerusalem, 1980 (in Hebrew); Yitzhak Ben Zvi,Our pop­u­la­tion in the coun­try, Executive Committee of the Union for Youth and the Jewish National Fund, Warsaw, 1929 (in Hebrew).]

Sand goes on to talk about the large impact of Jewish pros­e­ly­tiz­ing, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the Middle Ages, when non-Jews, eth­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, con­vert­ed to the Jewish reli­gion. He adds,

“The most sig­nif­i­cant mass con­ver­sion occurred in the 8^th cen­tu­ry, in the mas­sive Khazar king­dom between the Black and Caspian seas. The expan­sion of Judaism from the Caucasus into mod­ern Ukraine cre­at­ed a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ties, many of which retreat­ed from the 13^th cen­tu­ry Mongol inva­sions into east­ern Europe. There, with Jews from the Slavic lands to the south and from what is now mod­ern Germany, they formed the basis of Yiddish culture.”

[Yiddish, spo­ken by the Jews of east­ern Europe, was a Germano-Slavic lan­guage incor­po­rat­ing Hebrew words.]

Sand was an Israeli sol­dier for three years and fought in the Six-Day War of 1967, so it’s inter­est­ing what he says next:

“The Israeli forces who seized Jerusalem in 1967 believed them­selves to be the direct descen­dents of the myth­ic king­dom of David* rather than – God for­bid – of Berber war­riors or Khazar horse­men. The Jews claimed to con­sti­tute a spe­cif­ic eth­nic group that had returned to Jerusalem, its cap­i­tal, from 2,000 years of exile and wandering.

…Since the 1970s sup­pos­ed­ly sci­en­tif­ic research, car­ried out in Israel, has des­per­ate­ly striv­en to demon­strate that Jews through­out the world are close­ly genet­i­cal­ly relat­ed… By val­i­dat­ing an essen­tial­ist, eth­no­cen­tric def­i­n­i­tion of Judaism it encour­ages a seg­re­ga­tion that sep­a­rates Jews from non-Jews – whether Arabs, Russian immi­grants or for­eign work­ers… But Jews world­wide have always tend­ed to form reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties, usu­al­ly by con­ver­sion; they can­not be said to share an eth­nic­i­ty derived from a unique ori­gin and dis­placed over 20 cen­turies of wandering.“

*Please note that I dis­agree with Sand when he says that David’s king­dom was mythic.

Arthur Koestler (1905 – 1983) was a Jewish author and jour­nal­ist from Hungary (lat­er a British cit­i­zen) who wrote a book in 1976 titled, “The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage” (avail­able in PDF form here). Koestler’s the­sis was that a major­i­ty of Jews today have ances­tral roots in the ancient Khazar region (cor­re­spond­ing to mod­ern SW Russia, Eastern Ukraine, and Western Kazakhstan), where many mem­bers of the Khazar roy­al­ty and also of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion con­vert­ed to Talmudic Judaism in the 8^th cen­tu­ry AD and adopt­ed the Yiddish lan­guage, which is based on the Hebrew alpha­bet. Toward the end of Koestler’s book, he sum­ma­rized its con­tents with these words:

“In Part One of this book I have attempt­ed to trace the his­to­ry of the Khazar Empire based on the scant exist­ing sources. In Part Two, Chapters V‑VII, I have com­piled the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence which indi­cates that the bulk of Eastern Jewry — and hence of world Jewry — is of Khazar-Turkish, rather than Semitic, ori­gin. In the last chap­ter I have tried to show that the evi­dence from anthro­pol­o­gy con­curs with his­to­ry in refut­ing the pop­u­lar belief in a Jewish race descend­ed from the bib­li­cal tribe.”

Koestler stat­ed that his research under­mined many accu­sa­tions of anti-Semitism, since many Jews are not even Semitic. His work was under­stand­ably con­sid­ered to be con­tro­ver­sial. Some DNA experts were crit­i­cal or skep­ti­cal of it, while oth­ers agreed. Dr. Eran Elhalk and Dr. Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin are two geneti­cists who agree with Koestler’s hypoth­e­sis. They con­duct­ed a 2012 study at John Hopkins University, find­ing that the European Jewish pop­u­la­tion fea­tured a mix of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ances­tries. Their work is summed up in this abstract pub­lished by Oxford University Press:

The ques­tion of Jewish ances­try has been the sub­ject of con­tro­ver­sy for over two cen­turies and has yet to be resolved. The “Rhineland hypoth­e­sis” depicts Eastern European Jews as a “pop­u­la­tion iso­late” that emerged from a small group of German Jews who migrat­ed east­ward and expand­ed rapid­ly. Alternatively, the “Khazarian hypoth­e­sis” sug­gests that Eastern European Jews descend­ed from the Khazars, an amal­gam of Turkic clans that set­tled the Caucasus in the ear­ly cen­turies CE and con­vert­ed to Judaism in the 8^th cen­tu­ry. Mesopotamian and Greco – Roman Jews con­tin­u­ous­ly rein­forced the Judaized empire until the 13^th cen­tu­ry. Following the col­lapse of their empire, the Judeo – Khazars fled to Eastern Europe. The rise of European Jewry is there­fore explained by the con­tri­bu­tion of the Judeo – Khazars. Thus far, how­ev­er, the Khazars’ con­tri­bu­tion has been esti­mat­ed only empir­i­cal­ly, as the absence of genome-wide data from Caucasus pop­u­la­tions pre­clud­ed test­ing the Khazarian hypoth­e­sis. Recent sequenc­ing of mod­ern Caucasus pop­u­la­tions prompt­ed us to revis­it the Khazarian hypoth­e­sis and com­pare it with the Rhineland hypoth­e­sis. We applied a wide range of pop­u­la­tion genet­ic analy­ses to com­pare these two hypothe­ses. Our find­ings sup­port the Khazarian hypoth­e­sis and por­tray the European Jewish genome as a mosa­ic of Near Eastern-Caucasus, European, and Semitic ances­tries, there­by con­sol­i­dat­ing pre­vi­ous con­tra­dic­to­ry reports of Jewish ances­try. We fur­ther describe a major dif­fer­ence among Caucasus pop­u­la­tions explained by the ear­ly pres­ence of Judeans in the Southern and Central Caucasus. Our results have impor­tant impli­ca­tions for the demo­graph­ic forces that shaped the genet­ic diver­si­ty in the Caucasus and for med­ical studies.
Read more here : Who Are the Jews in Israel Today?

In just the lat­est sign of his descent into the com­pro­mised apos­tate church, mega-star Prosperity Gospel preach­er T.D. Jakes very art­ful­ly evad­ed call­ing a homo­sex­u­al­i­ty a sin when pressed on the issue in an inter­view with the Huffington Post. Taking a page from the play­book of Joel Osteen, Jakes made sure not to say any­thing Biblical in the main­stream media inter­view and then took a stronger stance once the ques­tions from the Christian com­mu­ni­ty fol­lowed. Jakes’ com­ments reflect the Apostasy – the proph­e­sied falling away in the church from Biblical Christianity.

“It’s A Complex Issue”

Here is the video of Jakes with Huffington Post con­trib­u­tor Marcus Lamont Hill as it turned to the sub­ject of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the church:

Hill rephrased the first lis­ten­er ques­tion by ask­ing Jakes “how should the church get along [with homo­sex­u­als who want to attend and join]?” This was a ques­tion that a pas­tor who believes in sound, Biblical doc­trine could eas­i­ly answer. The church should get along with mem­bers of the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty like it does with all oth­er peo­ple – shar­ing the Biblical Gospel mes­sage that we are all sin­ners who deserve hell but can receive grace thanks to the sac­ri­fice of Jesus Christ on the cross for the for­give­ness of sin. But instead of stat­ing Biblical truth, Jakes opt­ed for a non-answer:

“Absolutely… I think it is going to be diverse from church to church. Every church has a dif­fer­ent opin­ion on the issue and every gay per­son is dif­fer­ent,” he replied. “And I think that to speak that the church — the black church, the white church or any kind of church you wan­na call it — are all the same, is total­ly not true.”

Of course this response did not answer the ques­tion at all. When fur­ther pressed on the issue Jakes gave a ring­ing endorse­ment to “gay friend­ly” or gay-affirm­ing church­es: “LGBT’s of dif­fer­ent types and sorts have to find a place of wor­ship that reflects what your views are and what you believe like any­one else,” he outlined.
“The church should have the right to have its own con­vic­tions and val­ues; if you don’t like those con­vic­tions and val­ues [and] you total­ly dis­agree with it, don’t try to change my house, move into your own … and find some­body who gets what you get about faith.”

Jakes’ advised gay peo­ple who believe homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is not a sin to seek out church­es that “reflect their views.” This is basi­cal­ly encour­ag­ing peo­ple to believe a false Gospel. In the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul gave a farewell exhor­ta­tion to a group of his dis­ci­ples know­ing he would like­ly nev­er see them again. In it he said:

“Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the coun­sel of God. Take heed there­fore unto your­selves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over­seers, to feed the church of God, which he hath pur­chased with his own blood.” (Acts 20:26 – 28).

Paul said his hands were clean from being respon­si­ble for anyone’s life because he preached “all the coun­sel of God.” In oth­er words, the Apostle did not pick and choose to preach only the por­tions of the Bible that were pleas­ant to all peo­ple and tick­led the ears. He preached God’s entire Word, regard­less of how dire or stern it may have seemed to his audi­ence. This is because it is essen­tial for all peo­ple to real­ize their sin before God. All peo­ple (this author includ­ed) are sin­ners – the Bible makes this clear: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glo­ry of God..” (Romans 3:23). Conviction of that sin is what can lead a per­son to under­stand that they need a Savior. And that Savior is The Lord Jesus Christ.

If a per­son lives their lives vio­lat­ing God’s Word and hav­ing no remorse or repen­tance for that sin, then they could nev­er feel a need for for­give­ness. And thus their hearts reject God’s mes­sage. And this is pre­cise­ly what Jakes was pro­mot­ing by encour­ag­ing those in the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty to attend church­es that affirm their world­view. This is the clear sign of a heretic and false teacher. In the same pas­sage of Acts 20 where Paul admon­ish­es his dis­ci­ples to preach “all the coun­sel of God” he fol­lowed that up with a grave warn­ing:“For I know this, that after my depart­ing shall griev­ous wolves enter in among you, not spar­ing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speak­ing per­verse things, to draw away dis­ci­ples after them. Therefore watch, and remem­ber, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.” (Acts 20:29 – 31). The “wolves” in ques­tion were false teach­ers pre­sent­ing them­selves as “strong Christian preach­ers” but who in fact were teach­ing hereti­cal, unbib­li­cal doc­trines, like Jakes.
Beginning and End has already exam­ined the wild­ly unbib­li­cal Prosperity Gospel doc­trine of Jakes as well as his New Age teach­ing series he led with Oprah Winfrey. So it is of lit­tle sur­prise that when pressed on the issue of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty (some­thing you will nev­er hear Jakes or any mega-church tele­vi­sion pas­tor preach on), he offered up such a sin­ful response.

The Bible and Homosexuality

And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the begin­ning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and moth­er, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What there­fore God hath joined togeth­er, let not man put asun­der. – The Lord Jesus Christ, Matthew 19:3 – 6.

The Word of God is clear that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a sin. God’s order for inti­mate rela­tion­ships is for a man to be mar­ried to one woman for life. And what this means for a gay per­son enter­ing the church is that like every­one else who is attend­ing, they have to be ready to put God’s Word and desires before their own. The Christian life is one of sur­ren­der. It is a sub­mis­sion to God’s Holy and per­fect will, even if we do not ful­ly com­pre­hend it.

Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked for­sake his way, and the unright­eous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mer­cy upon him; and to our God, for he will abun­dant­ly par­don. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nei­ther are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heav­ens are high­er than the earth, so are my ways high­er than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. – Isaiah 55:6 – 9.

The Lord’s think­ing and plans are well beyond those of cor­rupt human­i­ty. So while it may seem hard to under­stand the rea­son­ing behind some of the Bible, it does not negate its truth. What helps a per­son under­stand the Bible and God bet­ter is receiv­ing the Spirit of God. This is what occurs when a per­son believes in Jesus Christ’s sac­ri­fice for the for­give­ness of their sins. Their old spir­it, cor­rupt­ed with the sin nature all peo­ple pos­sess, dies. And it is replaced by a new spir­it, giv­en from God, that seeks to please The Lord. At the same time, that new­ly regen­er­at­ed Christian is still liv­ing in the flesh body we are all born with. And that body still con­tains the sin nature. And thus a Christians spir­it is con­stant­ly at war with the flesh. The Lord Jesus Christ said: “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temp­ta­tion: the spir­it indeed is will­ing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41).

So the chal­lenge for a per­son in any kind of sex­u­al sin is sim­ple: are you will­ing to give up your own desires and seek to obey The Lord? This is what a true, Christian pas­tor should be advis­ing with respect to how any group can “get along” with the church. The book of Galatians describes this chal­lenge in the Christian life:

I am cru­ci­fied with Christ: nev­er­the­less I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave him­self for me… This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not ful­fil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lus­teth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are con­trary the one to the oth­er: so that ye can­not do the things that ye would. – Galatians 2:20; 5:16 – 17.

Note that T.D. Jakes says noth­ing about this. He does not even quote the Scriptures at all in answer­ing this ques­tion. Instead he offered answers that dis­tract­ed from the very direct ques­tions being asked to him. Jakes then fur­ther showed his apos­ta­sy by say­ing the issue of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty should be addressed “behind closed doors” and that the issue of “sex­u­al­i­ty ver­sus spir­i­tu­al­i­ty” was com­plex “in the Bible days.” Jakes accused the Apostle Paul of strug­gling with issues of sex­u­al­i­ty and bases this on a ref­er­ence to 1 Corinthians 11 and the admo­ni­tion for women to have a “cov­er­ing” on their heads – a ref­er­ence to both the lit­er­al veils women wore at that time in pub­lic and the metaphor­i­cal “cov­er” that a man has as an author­i­ty fig­ure over a woman. This pas­sage has noth­ing to do what­so­ev­er with sex­u­al­i­ty. And nowhere is there any indi­ca­tion that the Apostle Paul “strug­gled” to write this pas­sage. 2 Timothy 3:16 says:

All scrip­ture is giv­en by inspi­ra­tion of God, and is prof­itable for doc­trine, for reproof, for cor­rec­tion, for instruc­tion in right­eous­ness: That the man of God may be per­fect, thor­ough­ly fur­nished unto all good works. – 2 Timothy 3:16 – 17.

To say Paul “strug­gled” with his writ­ing is to imply that the Scriptures were not divine­ly inspired. Jakes con­tin­ued his incor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible by say­ing Paul “grap­pled” with these issues and we are “grap­pling with them now.” This is what the Apostle Paul, by inspi­ra­tion of the Holy Spirit, wrote about homosexuality:

Wherefore God also gave them up to unclean­ness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dis­hon­our their own bod­ies between them­selves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and wor­shipped and served the crea­ture more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affec­tions: for even their women did change the nat­ur­al use into that which is against nature: And like­wise also the men, leav­ing the nat­ur­al use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward anoth­er; men with men work­ing that which is unseem­ly, and receiv­ing in them­selves that rec­om­pence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowl­edge, God gave them over to a repro­bate mind, to do those things which are not con­ve­nient; – Romans 1:24 – 28.

There is no grap­pling or strug­gle with the issues. Paul calls gay inti­ma­cy “against nature” and the prod­uct of rebel­lion against God. For Jakes to incor­rect­ly char­ac­ter­ize Paul’s words demon­strates that he either does not under­stand the Bible or is will­ing to spout all man­ner of heresy just to avoid hav­ing to say that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a sin.
The inter­view­er was clear­ly not sat­is­fied with Jakes’ attempts at deflec­tion and invit­ed him to come back again for anoth­er sit down to dis­cuss the issue fur­ther. It was quite appar­ent that Jakes was not going to answer the real ques­tion being posed: Was he ready to declare that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is no longer a sin?

The “Joel Osteen Backtrack”

Soon after the inter­view Jakes received crit­i­cism from Christian blogs for his state­ments. And Jakes issued a post on Facebook to “clar­i­fy” his remarks.

Read more here :http://begin​ningan​dend​.com/​a​p​o​s​t​a​s​y​-​a​l​e​r​t​-​t​-​d​-​j​a​k​e​s​-​g​r​a​p​p​l​e​s​-​w​i​t​h​-​c​a​l​l​i​n​g​-​h​o​m​o​s​e​x​u​a​l​i​t​y​-​a​-​s​in/

Pope Francis came to America and the Nation stopped, People fell over them­selves to kiss his ring oth­ers stood in line for hours to catch a glimpse of the Pontiff.
Francis’ first vis­it to America came after the American President Barack Obama paid him a vis­it at the seat of Catholicism at theVatican city.

No sin­gle event in my life­time has gen­er­at­ed such excite­ment nei­ther has any event, oth­er than the September 11^th 2001 Terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC received such wall to wall tele­vi­sion cov­er­age. This, even as more and more evi­dence sur­faces of count­less cas­es of Priests sex­u­al­ly abus­ing lit­tle boys for decades, maybe more.

The United States Census Bureau Records give some star­tling sta­tis­tics, backed up by denom­i­na­tion­al reports and the Assemblies of God U.S. Missions: Every year more than 4000 church­es close their doors com­pared to just over 1000 new church starts!
That’s a 75% annu­al decline in the num­ber of church­es in the United States.
Every year, 2.7 mil­lion church mem­bers fall into inac­tiv­i­ty. This trans­lates into the real­iza­tion that peo­ple are leav­ing the church. Research found that they are leav­ing as hurt­ing and wound­ed vic­tims-of some kind of abuse, dis­il­lu­sion­ment, or just plain neglect!

Nevertheless Americans and many more around the world are excit­ed about Pope Francis.
What is behind this phenomenon ?
Many refer to him as a Liberal, oth­ers say he is trans­form­ing the Church into a more era sen­si­tive Institution.
As such many are clam­or­ing to be seen sup­port­ing his views.
Of course many of Francis’ views though sound­ing rea­son­ably like Biblical teach­ings, tend to have a per­mis­sive slant all of his own.
The lev­el of excite­ment gen­er­at­ed and the media lan­guage is almost cloy­ing in its effer­ves­cence over the Pontiff.
Religious and non­re­li­gious alike claim him as their Pope. Round-table pan­elists gush flow­ery praise for Jorge Mario Bergoglio who seem to say and do all the right things.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer anchor­ing one leg of the wall to wall cov­er­age stopped the con­ver­sa­tion to point out to the Nation “he just stopped , and blessed that lit­tle girl right there, he just blessed that lit­tle girl”.
But does Jorge Mario Bergoglio have the pow­er to bless anyone ?
When asked about Homosexuality pri­or to his American vis­it Jorge Mario Bergoglio asked Journalists “who am I to judge”?
Exactly what the world wants to hear !!!

Romans 1:26 – 28

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shame­ful lusts. Even their women exchanged nat­ur­al rela­tions for unnat­ur­al ones. 27 In the same way the men also aban­doned nat­ur­al rela­tions with women and were inflamed with lust for one anoth­er. Men com­mit­ted inde­cent acts with oth­er men, and received in them­selves the due penal­ty for their per­ver­sion. 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worth­while to retain the knowl­edge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
Leviticus 18:22 — Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with wom­ankind: it [is] abomination.
Jude 1:7 — Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like man­ner, giv­ing them­selves over to for­ni­ca­tion, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an exam­ple, suf­fer­ing the vengeance of eter­nal fire.
It’s per­fect­ly Christ-like not to judge , but if one is a fol­low­er of Christ it is imper­a­tive that Christians do not com­pro­mise on sin but tell the world “thus sayeth the Lord”. For we are com­mand­ed to love the sin­ner but hate the sin.Claiming “who am I to judge is false teach­ing in that context.
Of course it is up to God to judge , but iden­ti­fy­ing sin is not judg­ing. It is imper­a­tive that we are able to dis­cern all sin and seek to avoid wil­ful sin. We must eschew and shun sin, for even though we sin we can­not be com­fort­able in sin. God is right­eous, if we are com­fort­able in sin how can we hope to have a rela­tion­ship with him?
God’s right­eous­ness and sin can­not co-exist togeth­er, sin sep­a­rates us from our creator.
Those who refuse to call sin what it is by telling us they can­not judge are chang­ing the word of God to fool the world into believ­ing we can come as we are and remain as we are.

Jesus’ Disciples did preach the unmit­i­gat­ed , unvar­nished truth of his Gospel. According to the Bible they were all Martyred save for one. John the Baptist preached the truth of his com­ing he was exe­cut­ed before Jesus died. I am in no way sug­gest­ing that Christians should go out seek­ing Martyrdom but what kind of chil­dren of God are we if we fail to use our voic­es to lift up the lord?
What kind of Christians are we if we are afraid to speak the true word of God because we are con­cerned with what man may do to us.
I am more con­cerned about what will hap­pen if I fail to tell those peo­ple with­in my sphere of influ­ence of the Tribulation to come.

The Pontiff nev­er both­ered to men­tion what the Bible teach­es on the sub­ject. Merely say­ing “who am I to judge’. Coming from him that state­ment auto­mat­i­cal­ly gets con­strued and spun to mean the Pope agrees it’s okay.
Was he cog­nisant of that fact when he failed to ref­er­ence the word of God choos­ing to mere­ly inject his own views with­out Biblical authority?
He chal­lenges Nations to be kind and com­pas­sion­ate to the poor , exact­ly the kind of lan­guage which will bring peo­ple to his side.

• According to the World Bank’s most recent esti­mates, in 2011, 17 per­cent of peo­ple in the devel­op­ing world lived at or below $1.25 a day. That’s down from 43 per­cent in 1990 and 52 per­cent in 1981.
• This means that, in 2011, just over one bil­lion peo­ple lived on less than $1.25 a day, com­pared with 1.91 bil­lion in 1990, and 1.93 bil­lion in 1981.
• Progress has been slow­er at high­er pover­ty lines. In all, 2.2 bil­lion peo­ple lived on less than US $2 a day in 2011, the aver­age pover­ty line in devel­op­ing coun­tries and anoth­er com­mon mea­sure­ment of deep depri­va­tion. That is only a slight decline from 2.59 bil­lion in 1981.
  Of course peo­ple are going to be drawn to a mes­sage of help­ing the poor.….…

Two beasts are described in chap­ter 13, one from the sea (vs. 1) and one from the land (vs. 11). With the beast out of the sea, we come to that one who, regard­less of his claims as the white horse rid­er or peace mak­er, comes as a great source of dark­ness into the world. He comes not to save the world, but to damn the world. In essence, what we have in this chap­ter in the rise of the beast and the false prophet is noth­ing short of the ‘trin­i­ty from hell’ in that both are the prod­uct of the machi­na­tions of that old ser­pent, the dev­il or Satan.19. The Beast and the False Prophet (Rev 13:1 – 18)19. The Beast and the False Prophet (Rev 13:1 – 18)

THE FALSE PROPHET AND IMAGE OF THE BEAST OF REVELATION Bible​.net has this to say . The beast, as I have shown pre­vi­ous­ly, is the Papacy or Roman Catholic Church. Revelation 19:20 is the key to iden­ti­fy­ing who the false prophet is. Here it asso­ciates the false prophet with mir­a­cles per­formed for the beast. This is a link to Rev 13:11 – 14 where the same mir­a­cles are per­formed by a sec­ond beast with two horns like a lamb, that speaks like a drag­on. So this sec­ond lamb-like beast is also the false prophet.

Verse 12 is say­ing that the United States will com­bine Church and State and strict­ly enforce apos­tate Catholic reli­gious doc­trine, just like the Roman Catholic church did in the mid­dle ages! Yes! The cur­rent effort on the part of evan­gel­i­cal Christians to “take back America” will succeed!

In Verse 13 it shows us that this revival of Church and State in the U.S. will be accom­pa­nied by great won­ders (mir­a­cles). The fire com­ing down from heav­en is a deceiv­ing mir­a­cle, a false won­der, that may well refer to a coun­ter­feit out­pour­ing of the Holy Spirit! Already today a false man­i­fes­ta­tion of tongues, holy laugh­ter etc. is sweep­ing church­es in North America!

In verse 14 the lamb-like beast (the United States) pro­motes an image to the first beast (the Roman Catholic Church). When it says “an image to the (first) beast”, it means that the apos­tate Protestant move­ment in the United States will encour­age the estab­lish­ment of Church/​State pow­er, and leg­is­late it’s reli­gious agen­da on every­one. It will be the mir­ror “image” of the satan­ic prac­tices, poli­cies and per­se­cu­tions of the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages.

So using false mir­a­cles as proof of it’s author­i­ty, the apos­tate Protestant church in the United States will take con­trol of the gov­ern­ment and pass reli­gious leg­is­la­tion to enforce it’s agen­da, and it will pro­mote false Catholic doc­trines. What false doc­trines, you might ask?

1. When you are dead, you are not dead. Your con­scious self or spir­it waits at some bus stop (pur­ga­to­ry) between here and heav­en. Here you are free to lis­ten to the prayers of the liv­ing and for­ward these peti­tions for grace to Mary or Jesus.
- They can­not accept that the wages of sin is death. Death includes the loss of any con­scious­ness of the mind. Those who are dead hear noth­ing and can do noth­ing, for them­selves or any­one else.

2. Salvation is obtained through min­is­ters or priests of the church. They have a bank account with Jesus and can dis­pense grace or for­give­ness to those they favor. Conversely, they can cut off your source of for­give­ness if you do not accept their unscrip­tur­al traditions.
- No church can dis­pense or with­hold for­give­ness, for­give­ness is yours from God through faith.

3. They wor­ship on a day cho­sen by a pagan emper­or of Rome, Sunday, although there is absolute­ly NO scrip­tur­al evi­dence that Jesus com­mand­ed such a change in the Ten Commandments.
- The Sabbath is Saturday with­out ques­tion. It is a memo­r­i­al to Jesus the Creator, who worked six days and rest­ed on the sev­enth. To wor­ship on any oth­er day is to reject the Creator, reject God, reject Jesus. Whom do you wor­ship if you reject the 10 com­mand­ments of God?

4. We are saved by good works. God is keep­ing track of every­thing we do and the sum total of our good works bet­ter add up to a big­ger num­ber than our sins. Even “good” peo­ple who have reject­ed Jesus, will by this log­ic, have a chance so long as their good works total is high enough.
- Your works amount to noth­ing with­out faith. By the same token, faith with­out works is a dead faith.

So the False Prophet is in fact, apos­tate Protestantism based in the United States. How do you rec­og­nize apos­tate reli­gion? Try the fol­low­ing addi­tion­al indi­ca­tors, note that they are accom­pa­nied by a seri­ous lack of mean­ing­ful scrip­tur­al study.

A. Theology that preach­es that God is a lov­ing God and most peo­ple will be saved if only they will just be good peo­ple. You will see a lot of coun­try and west­ern style gospel singers, a lot of prais­ing Jesus and bind­ing Satan, col­lect­ing the tithe, but pre­cious lit­tle scrip­ture study, and what lit­tle there is, is very shallow.

B. The hap­py Christian, it is O.K. to be rich, send us your seed mon­ey today and you will get it back 1000 fold, kind of reli­gion. A pri­ma­ry focus on God reward­ing his fol­low­ers with earth­ly rich­es. If only you will send in your love gift, God will reward you finan­cial­ly. And by the way, we have some neat things to send you if you con­tribute today- (most­ly tapes, books, plaques, glass­es, sculp­tures, life­time mem­ber­ships, get your name engraved on the church­es top givers plaque, etc.) You could almost call it the Christian Shopping Network. Did Jesus sell *any­thing* dur­ing His min­istry? No- what He offered was not for sale, it was FREE!

C. A focus on mir­a­cle heal­ing of the sick, prayer requests and again end­less pleas for dona­tions, just to stay on the air.

D. A mis­sion of build­ing a TV or Radio sta­tion empire, from which there is lit­tle or no bible study, just more pleas for cash dur­ing long telethons, and prais­ing Jesus. Usually broad­cast from mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar lav­ish stu­dios with lots of expen­sive decorations.

Am I say­ing Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the Beast of Revelation ? I will allow Bible Prophesy and your spir­it of dis­cern­ment to decide. Some who seek the Lord have gone fur­ther than I am pre­pared to go. What I do know is what the Scriptures says.

Never before have we seen the Catholic Church seek to uni­fy all reli­gions . In an appar­ent effort to uni­fy all faiths under one world reli­gion Pope Francis took unprece­dent­ed steps by host­ing a series of inter­faith gath­er­ings at the Vatican which saw Muslim prayers giv­en from the pul­pit for the first time in its history.

The web­site Beginningandend​.com The Coming One World Religion – Pope Francis Hosts Muslim Prayers At Vatican makes the case that the Pontiff’s actions is all proph­e­sied in Scriptures as the com­ing one World Religionof the Anti Christ.

Quote :“The Pope’s efforts while seem­ing­ly noble, are in com­plete con­tra­dic­tion to Bible Scripture. But as Biblical Christianity is being aban­doned in the con­tem­po­rary church, pub­lic dis­plays of “spir­i­tu­al uni­ty” will become more com­mon. It is all proph­e­sied in Scripture as the world moves clos­er to the com­ing one world reli­gion of the Antichrist”.

Pope Francis wad­ed into Middle East peace-mak­ing this evening by wel­com­ing both the Israeli and Palestinian pres­i­dents to the Vatican for an evening of prayers.
Israeli President Shimon Peres was the first to arrive at the Vatican hotel where Pope Francis lives, fol­lowed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Francis warm­ly greet­ed both and met pri­vate­ly with each one before head­ing out to the Vatican gar­den for the service.

It took place in the Vatican gar­dens in the shad­ow of St. Peter’s Basilica, the most reli­gious­ly neu­tral place in the tiny city-state. It incor­po­rat­ed Jewish, Christian and Muslim prayers – deliv­ered in Hebrew, English, Arabic and Italian.
The prayers focused on three themes com­mon to each of the reli­gions: thank­ing God for cre­ation, seek­ing for­give­ness for past wrong­do­ing and pray­ing to God to bring peace to the region.
Francis, Peres and Abbas were expect­ed to deliv­er brief remarks, shake hands and plant an olive tree togeth­er in a sign of peace. The spir­i­tu­al leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians was also present to give a unit­ed Christian front.

Beginningandend​.com went on to say.
While the desire for peace in the Middle East is a noble cause, no Bible believ­ing Christian should ever con­fuse polit­i­cal goals with the spir­i­tu­al com­mands of God. While Christians can social­ize, work with and con­duct polit­i­cal nego­ti­a­tions with peo­ple of all faiths, reli­gious activ­i­ty is to be exclu­sive­ly done in a Biblical man­ner. From the first com­mand­ment God gave to Moses, The Lord’s stance on join­ing in the wor­ship of any of oth­er god is clear:

And God spake all these words, say­ing, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no oth­er gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any like­ness of any thing that is in heav­en above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thy­self to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jeal­ous God, vis­it­ing the iniq­ui­ty of the fathers upon the chil­dren unto the third and fourth gen­er­a­tion of them that hate me; – Exodus 20:1 – 5.

Francis com­ing to America rep­re­sents the com­ing togeth­er of Church and State in a one World Religion. It is an apos­tate which will remove God Almighty as the head of the Church replac­ing him with the Devil and his rep­re­sen­ta­tives here on earth.
The Evangelical chris­t­ian Church is blind to this phe­nom­e­non many Preachers and Teachers of the Gospel are too busy teach­ing pros­per­i­ty and hap­pi­ness theology.
The Church miss­es a ter­rif­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty to use Biblical prophe­cy to bring souls to Christ Jesus.
The Christian faith is the only faith which has prophet­ic words which tells us with immac­u­late accu­ra­cy how events will unfold.
Yet many Preachers of the Gospel are doing noth­ing to warn the flock.
Jeremiah 51:6 Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliv­er every man his soul: be not cut off in her iniq­ui­ty; for this is the time of the LORD’S vengeance; he will ren­der unto her a recompense.
Babylon is not a city as some of us Christians are led to believe . The Babylon spo­ken of here is the fall­en Church . Christians will have to come out of the fall­en Church. The Church which is pre­oc­cu­pied with telling Parishioners how to attain wealth and hap­pi­ness is lost . It is a Satanic doc­trine which is not borne out in the teach­ings of Christ . Therefor as Jeremiah 51: 6 says, we must, all of us , “deliv­er every man his soul”.