This is not so much a Bible study as a thought paper on the current religious and political climate. Since I live in the United States I will primarily concern myself with events and trends in that country.
The book of Revelation, along with most of the prophetic portions of Daniel and a few other scattered passages, warns of a great power. John called it the antichrist. Not everyone accepts all these passages as referring to the same person/power, but most do.
During the reformation free-thinking Bible scholars began to see that the organized church itself had fulfilled these prophecies and they began to teach it. The organized church, of course, wanted a way to distract attention from these teachings, and it put its scholars to work to find alternative interpretations.
The result carried a great deal of subtle power, for the scholars suggested and dispersed two alternative interpretations. One put this great power in the time of John, so that most of the prophecies of Revelation were fulfilled in his day. The other pushed this antichrist into the future.
The latter "futurist" viewpoint has become the standard prophetic yardstick for evangelical Christianity. The intoxicating beauty of these ideas is that the true followers of God don't have to contend with God's judgements on the earth. A generation ago Hal Lindsey used it as the basis for his book The Late Great Planet Earth. And the more recent Left Behind series novelizes this idea.
Not too long ago I saw an advance promotional copy of a new book titled The Last Disciple. The publisher billed it as an alternative interpretation to that used in the previous set of novels. I rather doubted the "historicist" interpretation (that taken by the reformers) would be used, and it only took of few minutes of browsing to confirm that it took the "preterist" Babylon-represents-Rome position.
You might guess (or even have read elsewhere on this site) that I accept the historicist approach to these passages. I had occasion to review my ideas last week when someone who visited my Bible study class brought up some alternative ideas about some specifics of the historicist viewpoint.
Their ideas had to do with the "daily [sacrifice]" of Daniel 8. Actually, the visitor wouldn't say what he actually thought, but I was able to find a website that dealt with the issue and that used many of the same citations the visitor had brought up. I'm quite sure the website's author is the man from whom my visitor got his ideas.
I won't go into detail here. The word "daily" translates a Hebrew word that means "continual." Probably over half of its uses in the Old Testament have to do with the religious services of the Israelites. The word "sacrifice" was added by the translators who couldn't make sense of the term otherwise. However, since the word 'sanctuary' is used in Daniel 8 it would make sense that this "continual" has reference to sanctuary services.
For me that adds great meaning to the predictions of a "falling away." But my visitor and his mentor want to take a different viewpoint. They want the "continual" to refer to pagan Rome, which was "taken away" by the rise of the organized church to a political power.
As I say, that interpretation doesn't have the power of mine. In what sense is pagan Rome "continual?" I may be a little rusty on world history, but I understand that Rome fell of its own accord and that the organized church then moved in to fill a power vacuum.
But what I read did stir some interesting thoughts. Around 500 A. D., when the church began to rise as a political power, it replaced a secular (read pagan) government. While most of the Roman authorities prior to 300 A. D. adhered to Greek or Roman religious customs, the empire declared itself officially neutral on religion. The Romans believed a large empire would last longer if it didn't attempt to force its own religious practice on the conquered peoples.
I don't think it is any coincidence that Jesus came to earth during the height of Rome's power. The religious liberty granted by the empire made it possible for his message to spread rapidly after he left the earth. The Jews hated the Romans because they wanted to return to the days of "theocracy" and Jewish independence, but they much preferred the Romans to the Greeks, who sought to force ALL of Greek culture on the peoples of their empire.
When the church became a political power, religious liberty died. Church authorities had the power to declare dissenters "heretics" and to use the tools of justice to enforce their view of doctrine.
Let's stop here to assert that the question at this point isn't if the heretics are genuinely wrong. I'm sure many false teachers met their demise at the hands of a politically empowered church. But I'm equally sure that some people who found genuine errors in church dogma received similar treatment. As long as humans weild power, they will misuse it.
What I'm saying is that it would be better to endure the chaos of some truly erroneous teaching than to run the chance of cutting off a messenger of God because what God wants cuts across social norms. And religious liberty isn't real unless it includes the freedom to be wrong. For that matter no freedom really exists if it's available only to those who are "right."
I think that same thing might happen again. Only this time the pagan political power is the United States of America. Now I know that Dr. D. James Kennedy insists that this country was founded by Christians. It is true that the first residents of the Massachusetts Bay colony were dissident Christians, but the Jamestown colony had no such religious background. In fact, at one point the British emptied a jail of prostitutes so there would be women in the new colony.
One of the prime thinkers of the American Revolution was Thomas Paine. He, along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and many other "founding fathers," did NOT accept Christianity at all. Paine wrote a book on the subject putting the Christian scriptures to ridicule. Indeed many thought of him as an atheist.
These men were NOT atheists, they were Deists. That means they believed in God, but didn't think Christians had the right concept of him. Thomas Paine went on to get involved in the French Revolution, during which "national apostasy led to national ruin." That's one writer's view of the enthronement of Reason.
The point is that these founding fathers recognized the wisdom of the Roman empire. They built religious liberty into the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights. While Christianity has generally been the majority religion in the United States, the country's strength has been its willingness to accept immigrants regardless of faith.
But the end of that approach may well be in sight. Once again a pagan, freedom-promoting government is being replaced by a power designed to enforce religious dogma. And as I said before, the question isn't if the religious values being promoted are right or wrong, it's if this country can remain strong when intolerance gains the clout of government sanction.
And make no mistake, intolerance is the goal here. Dr. Kennedy has specifically told his nationwide audience that the modern doctrine of tolerance is anti-Christian (he hasn't called it the antichrist).
Revelation 13 talks about two beasts. The first rises out of the sea, and its description links it to the antichrist power. The second rises out of the earth and creates an image to the first beast. Could it be that the rise of religion to political power in the United States will be this image? Is the U. S. part of the second beast? If so, the nation's future isn't very bright.
This, however, can explain the particular bitterness of political debate over the last ten or fifteen years. The divide has been between the pagans and the Christians. The pagans have long held sway in this country, and the Christians, like the Jews of Rome's day, have begun to resent it. "If we could just get political power we could turn this nation into a Christian-friendly place."
The Christians, then, argue with the force achieved when people think they're fighting for God. (According to my Bible God is all-powerful and doesn't need humans to defend him.) They have not just political conviction, but religious conviction that they're right and everyone else is wrong.
The pagans, meanwhile (and that includes many Christians like myself), see the features that made this country great being taken away. We see the liberty of ourselves and of others being trampled. We are angry, and anger often makes for less than enlightening debate.
Reading on in Revelation 13 becomes a very chilling experience in the light of today's political events. The two beasts conspire to declare economic sanctions against freedom lovers who refuse to yeild to their demands.
You may think it odd that the so-called "pro-life" movement demands that the death penalty be maintained. This, of course, exposes the lie they tell when they adopt this label. They approve the death penalty and they approve the administration's illegal war in the Middle East, so they have no real regard for the sacredness of human life. The only label that truthfully fits is "anti-abortion," and when the news media use the former label they join them in perptrating their lies.
But it's no surprise to students of Bible Prophecy of the historicist school that they should promote such contradictory views. They are forming the image to the beast, and the transition from pagan rule to ecclesiastical rule will have the same results this time as it did last time.
The rise of the church to power in the middle of the first millenium after Christ brought in a period of darkness and cultural stagnation we call the "dark" ages. They were dark because the light for men's pathways, the Bible, was hidden from the people. Knowledge is power, and the scriptures impart knowledge. To keep power for themselves, the leaders of the ecclesiastical juggernaut intentionally kept the common people in the "dark" by refusing to make the Bible accessible. Indeed, they actively persecuted those who sought to distribute the scriptures.
Near the end of these dark ages, when thinking people the world over were beginning to crack the shell of darkness that had kept the church in power, the church responded most viciously. Using its civil powers it began to identify, capture, and punish its enemies; often with death. The inquisition reached far and destroyed many honest, godly persons.
I have an idea that when the church has consolidated its power this time around it won't wait nearly a thousand years to begin another inquisition. The stakes are too high, and knowledge of the Bible is too widespread. I think the crackdown will be rapid and extremely violent. And the church will make use of the death penalty it is currently protecting.
Jesus told his followers how to detect false teachers.
"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them...." (Matthew 7:15, 16)The fruit of the current evangelical movement is already obvious. Their identity as ravenous wolves is visible to thinking people who have taken the scriptures as a light to their paths. Their teachings are not a disjointed hodge-podge of contradictory ideas. They have one goal, the extinguishment of paganism and of religious liberty.
The current successes of the evangelical movement (they claim to have secured the reelection of the most satanic president we have had in a long time) bodes very ill for this country and the world. The true followers of God will soon be "thrown to the lions" perhaps more literally than we'd like to think. And it will all be done in the name of God and morality.
It is no wonder that Jesus would say of Satan, "When he lies he speaks his native language!"