Today, The Bible & You

Today’s Front Page

The Nation’s Christian Newspaper

September 2023

The Gathering of the Bride of the Antichrist

  “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him though he bear long with them?  I tell you that he will avenge them speedily.  Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” — Luke 18:7-8

  What will “the religious Bride of Antichrist” look like at the end of the age?  Well if it’s anything like it is today, it’s going to be weird.  Today we have:

• False preachers teaching health, wealth, and prosperity.
• Fringe evangelicals calling everything “signs”: from dreams, laughing in the Lord, going into trances, words of wisdom, lying signs and wonders, and new “divine” revelations.
• The occult and new age movement exploding.
• Our “Father in Heaven” is being replaced with Our “Mother Earth”.
• Everybody’s predicting the future and everybody’s getting it wrong.
• Churches are getting squishy about teaching the Scriptures.
• Mormonism and polygamy are all over the news.
• The Church is either regarded as a joke, a threat or as some bland, feel-good, do-good, antiquated institution that is past it’s prime.
• 

 The Greatest Story Never Told: Modern Christian Martyrdom.  While Christians in the secular West languish in spiritual mediocrity, Christianity remains a deadly serious matter almost everywhere else, as we have reported from our Christian brethren in Manipur, India where thousands have been killed, women raped then paraded naked through the streets, and homes and churches burned to the ground.

  Masih was a simple street cleaner.  One day, while cleaning a garden in Lahore, the twenty-seven-year-old Pakistani Catholic was accused of deliberately piling garbage against the wall of a mosque.  He was arrested and thrown in jail, where he was repeatedly tortured for his faith.  While in prison, a police constable decided to earn a place in Janna (paradise) by killing him with a brick-cutting hammer.

 Thousands of miles away, on a beautiful mid-August day, thirty-two-year-old, Jesus Adrain Sanchez was giving religious instructions at a school in the rural area of Chaparral (Tolima), Columbia.  An armed man burst into the classroom, ordered him outside, and shot him dead.

  Deep in the Brazilian rainforest, a seventy-three-year-old Dorothy Stang, was used to living among people  who wanted her dead.  She had long been trying to protect peasant laborers from exploitation by logging firms and ranchers.  One day, while walking to a meeting of poor farmers near the town of Anapu in the western Brazilian state of Para, two armed men intercepted her on the path.  She knew what they were there to do.  Taking out her Bible, she began reading to them and, for a precious few minutes, they listened before opening fire.  Dorothy Slang was shot six times in the head, throat, and body.

  These are only three of the more than 100 who bear the unique distinction of being the first martyrs of the twenty-first century.  Dying for Christ seems almost surreal to most Westerners.  We live in a part of the world where Christianity rarely makes the news unless it is to be mocked or defamed.  Otherwise, the media is strangely silent about modern Christian martyrdom.

 The Bloodiest Century: The secular West has been looking the other way for a very long time.  Even the average church-going Christian is not likely to know that 45.5 million of the estimated 70 million Christians who have died for Christ did so in the last century. 

  So, will “the Church” during the end of days be any different?  Sadly, it will be worse.

 The One World Religion during the end times apocalypse will seem to believe in everything from the paranormal to visions and psychic healing, to killing Bible-believing Christians thinking they are doing good.  Satan will run roughshod over the earth’s religions. They will believe in nothing that comes from historic Christianity.  The new Lord’s Prayer will be:

 “Our nada who are in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada, hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.” — Ernest Hemingway, from a Clean Well-Lighted Place (1). 

The One World Religion of the end is

Described in the Bible like this:

“And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will show unto you the judgment of the great whore that sits upon many waters:” — Revelation 17:1

 If you want to figure out how so many religions will come together under one-world religion, here are some questions that you need to answer.

1.) What will the false religion, Mystery Babylon; the great Whore, look like?  Will all churches fall under the authority of the Antichrist?

2.) How will the Roman religion fit into the false religious system?  Will the Pope be the Pope of the Bride of Antichrist?

3.) Will denominations who do not abide by the Holy Scriptures be found in this false religion?

4.) Will the Green movement play a part?  Can we expect the worship of the Gaia Mother Earth to flourish in the end?

5.) What about Atheism?  Will they join the One World Religion just because they are glad to get rid of those #@!%Christians?

6.) How do religious cults and the occult world of witches and esoteric religions contribute to the Antichrist Bride at the end of days?  How will so much weirdness come together?

7.) Does Islam have a role as part of this Bride?  Will they be the strong arm behind the World Religious movement?

8.) And finally, What will Antichrist Bride look like?  And will it survive?

    Ecumenical Religious Unity —

A Plan of the Devil

  We are living in a day of ecumenical propaganda calling on the churches and religious systems of the world to amalgamate.  Church unity is moving at a breathtaking pace at the expense of the Scriptures.  This is the falling away from the God of the Bible that the Scriptures predicted would happen at the end of the age when the false prophet comes and performs the marriage to Antichrist.

 A Baptist minister participated with a Catholic priest in a marriage ceremony, and a Catholic priest participated in the ordination of a Baptist minister, after which he was quoted as saying, “It was a rich and meaningful experience.”

  As we approach the end of the Church Age, we can expect to see liberal Protestantism, in the form of the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, Islam, and all the religions of the world being swallowed up by the religious system of Rome.  This unity movement should not, however, be limited to apostate Christianity, as it will incorporate all the religions of the world.

  We can expect to see it move toward amalgamating all the religions of the world under Rome’s headship because our text states that the religious system at the end time will be a one-world religion: “Where the whore sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and tongues” (Revelation 17:15).  This can only mean a one world religious system.

  Ultimately the Antichrist and his followers will kill the religious harlot:  The Bible tells us in Revelation 17:3 that she sits on a “scarlet beast”, the same beast identified in Revelation 13 as the Antichrist.  And he adds this in Revelation 17:16, “And the ten horns which you saw upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire.”  The devil hates all religious systems, even the false ones!

  What kind of religious system can we expect under the harlot Bride?  What powerful secrets will she hold that permit her to bring together Atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and cultural (but unbelieving) Christians?  Most interpreters of the Protestant reformers who believed that the Pope would be the Antichrist and the Roman Catholic religion the whore of Babylon.  A Pope will be the False Prophet of Revelation 13.

The Prophecy of St. Malachy:

 “When the cardinals of the world pick John Paul II’s successor, they may well be choosing the next-to-last pope.  The pope who then follows this choice in the Chair of St. Peter will be the last pope, and after his reign, Rome will be destroyed.  Such has been the prophecy of St. Malachy, an Irish bishop who at his death in 1148 A.D. was discovered to have left behind a prophetic list of all future popes beginning with Pope Celestine II, whose papacy began in 1143 A.D.”

 “Malachy included a single line in Latin identifying a characteristic of each pope.  Historians say Malachy’s prediction — wherein he listed just 112 popes — has been amazingly accurate.”

 “John Paul II.  The 110th is ‘De Labore Solis’ (Of the Solar Eclipse, or From the Toil of the Sun) … John Paul II was born on May 18, 1920, during an eclipse of the sun.  Like the sun, he came out of the East (Poland).  Like the sun, he visited countries all around the globe.”

  On May 18, 1920, John Paul II (Karol Jozef Wojtyla) was born on a day when a relatively rare Annular Total Eclipse occurs.  This pope was the ultimate Sun God in every way!  Further, no one ever thought that the reason this pope visited so many countries around the world, unlike any predecessor, is because he was acting out his role as the “De Labore Solis”!  Nor that the reason the cardinals chose a Polish cardinal as pope was because that country was considered “out of the East”!

  John Paul II was the ultimate Roman Catholic Sun God!  Even though each Pontiff follows the Zoroastrian Tradition Sun God, John Paul II was the penultimate Sun God, just as we stated, above.

  On April 19, the first day of the Black Magick annual celebration known as the Blood Sacrifice to the Beast and the Catholic Cardinals elected their next pope!  He was Cardinal Ratzinger, who took the name, Benedict XVI.  Taking the name, “Benedict” seemingly “fulfills” the prophecy of St. Malachy, which stipulates that this 111th pope in the prophecy will be known as “Gloria Olivae” — The Glory of the Olive.

  As we noted, above, The Order of Saint Benedict has long claimed that this pope will come from its ranks. Also noted was that Saint Benedict “prophesied that before the end of the world his Order, known also as the Olivetans, will triumphantly lead the Catholic religion in its final fight against evil.”

 Thus, the German Cardinal Ratzinger has now been elected Pope and has taken the name “Benedict XVI”.  Catholic adherents will now claim that the prophecy of St. Malachy is now fulfilled to include this pope. Occultists throughout the world will note two other factors: 

  This designation seems to imply that the final pope– the actual False Prophet — might come from Rome, from the line of the Romans.  This possibility makes Biblical sense, for Antichrist himself is prophesied from coming out of a “Revived Roman Empire” (Daniel 9:26b).

 Therefore, it is consistent to think that the last pope might be a Roman, an Italian, with roots back to Imperial Rome.  Since the Roman Catholic religion has always falsely claimed that the Apostle Peter was their first pope, it seems logical that they would plan on their last pope being “Petrus Romanus”!  Listen to the explanation given in our first featured article above:

 “Wrote St. Malachy of the last pope: ‘In extreme persecution, the seat of the Holy Roman Church will be occupied by Peter the Roman, who will feed the sheep through many tribulations, at the term of which the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the formidable Judge will judge the people.  The End’.” [Ibid.]

 Does this pagan Catholic prophecy sound like this genuine prophetic Scripture?

 ” … the woman which reigns over the kings of the earth.” [Revelation 17:18] what “great city” is Jesus speaking of here?  We are told in another part of Revelation.

 St. Malachy predicts what Jesus predicted in the Book of Revelation. Chapter 17.  The final pope — the False Prophet — who serves Antichrist so faithfully at the beginning of the 7-year Tribulation, is hated by Antichrist and his 10 political kings.  At the right moment, Antichrist will turn his political and military power against this final pope — this False Prophet — and utterly destroy her with fire.

 Therefore, you can see that the prophecy of the Catholic priest, St. Malachy, conforms to the Biblical prophecy.  Thus, IF the St. Malachy prophecy comes true regarding this next pope, remember these facts, and do not get carried away with the masses of the undiscerning, who will react to fulfilled prophecy as a stamp of validation.

 If the St. Malachy prophecy holds true through this next pope and the final pope, does this means the world has only a short time left before the final pope — the False Prophet — fulfills his destiny?  Note the Biblical description of the False Prophet: 

 “Then I saw another beast rising up out of the land itself; he had two horns like a lamb …” [Revelation 13:11a; Parallel Bible, KJV/Amplified Bible Commentary].

  Did you catch the pertinent phrase?  “he had two horns like a lamb” — in other words, he pretended to be a Christian, and he will be accepted as a Christian.  The last part of this prophecy is equally important:

 “… and he spoke (roared) like a dragon.” [Revelation 13:11b] 

  Rome roars like the pagan, Babylonian dragon she is.  This dual essence is truly the Roman Catholic Papacy, and she is now maneuvering into position so that her Pope will one day serve as the False Prophet, serving Antichrist.

  The world is truly hurtling down the track toward the appearance of the Antichrist and his False Prophet. These perilous times are also a time when we can reach many who must be born again in our Lord Jesus Christ, turning to him alone for the forgiveness of sins.  God promises us in 1st John 1:7, 9, ” … the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin …  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Printed with permission of Today, The Bible & You located at P.O. Box 1722 Broken Arrow, Oklahoma 74013, Phone No. (918) 279-1136. The name of the original article in the September 2023 issue of Today’s Front Page was “The Gathering of the Bride of the Antichrist” www.JohnBarela.com.