The Destruction of the Nations, Part 2

Selected Scriptures

     Tonight, we continue in our study of prophecy.  We have been studying various prophetic themes in dealing with the end time tracing the end time from the return of Jesus Christ for His church, and now find ourselves studying the period known as the Tribulation, which follows the catching away of the church.  And in our study of the Tribulation, we have focused on several things.  First, the terrors of the Tribulation, then the place of Israel in the Tribulation, and now we are studying the place of the nations in the Tribulation.  And one of the important aspects of the nations in the Tribulation is the satanic world leader who is going to take over the rule of the nations during that seven-year period. 

     The apostle John, in writing to no particular church, but in his first general epistle to a wide circle of believers, made this remarkable statement.  He said, "Little children, ye have heard that Antichrist shall come."  How had they heard?...because it was distinctly recorded by the Old Testament prophets that there would come a final satanic world leader.  It was clearly reiterated in the teachings of Jesus himself and it was recited by those that Jesus sent to preach and teach.  And so, truly, could John say, "Little children, you have heard that Antichrist shall come," for they had. 

     Now, backing up, to understand what this means, we remember that God and Satan have been at war for a long time.  Ever since Satan decided that he would be like God and he gave those five "I will's"...I will, I will, I will, I will and God said, no, you won't, the rebellion began and Satan has been after God.  Now, Satan has used many devices in attempting to wrest the kingdom of this world from the power of God.  He has done particularly strong work in the area of destroying, or attempting to destroy, God's people.  Satan's particular attack has been on the promised Seed where back in Genesis, chapter 3 and verse 15, God promised that there would come a seed of a woman who would bruise the serpent's head.  God said there's coming a man who will destroy Satan.  Satan has known about that.  Satan knows who that man is.  It's Jesus Christ.  And all along, throughout the history of the world and redemptive history, Satan has tried to stop the birth of Jesus Christ.  He has tried to destroy the people of God and the plan of God and God's special person, the Messiah Christ.  And it's interesting just to trace how Satan has attempted to do it. 

     If you go back, for example...and don't turn to these things, just mark them down...to chapter 6 of Genesis and verse 2, you find that first of all, Satan attempted to stop the line of Messiah and the line of the Savior and the line of the Redeemer by creating a corrupt kind of humanity.  "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all whom they chose."  And here you have demons coming down and cohabiting with women to produce a kind of race that was beyond the redemption of a God-man.  You remember that God brought the flood and destroyed that race and saved only Noah and his family. 

     Satan tried again to destroy the people of God.  We find that in the first chapter of Exodus in the bondage of Egypt.  The children of Israel were brought to a tremendous crisis when Pharaoh decided to slaughter all of the baby boys.  And again, Satan was trying to destroy the creation or the procreation line that would bring about the Messiah. 

     There's a fascinating account of one attempt that Satan made in II Chronicles.  If you want to turn to that, I'll show you a couple of verses.  There was a royal line that ran in God's plan and the final result of that royal line was going to be the Messiah.  And so Satan wanted to cut that royal line off, therefore, making it impossible for God to fulfill His plan with the promised Seed.  One...it was very interesting things...but in II Chronicles 21, verse 4, "...Jehoram was risen up to the kingdom of his father, he strengthened himself and slew all his brethren with a sword and also some of the princes of Israel."  In the kingly line, there was a slaughter of everybody but Jehoram.  He killed all of his brothers, which reduced the kingly line to him.  But he had sons and so the kingly line continued.  But then Arabians came to the camp and killed all of his sons except one...except one.  And that one was Ahaziah.  And indicated in chapter 22, verse 1:  "The inhabitants of Jerusalem made Ahaziah, his youngest son, king in his stead, for the band of men who came with the Arabians to the camp had slain all the eldest."  So, he was the only one left.  Ahaziah reigned one year, wickedly, and he was counseled by his vial mother whose name was Athaliah.  Ahaziah was at one point wounded severely and his life hung by a thread.  He was later killed in a war with Jehu.  Jehu was sort of God's executioner.  You remember he also took care of Ahab.  But Ahaziah was not killed until he had had sons and the kingly line continued.

     And in chapter 22, verse 10, we come to a most interesting indication.  "When Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah."  She slaughtered all the royal seed.  And here again, Satan was using Athaliah to try to cut off the possibility of Messiah being born.  Oh, but look at verse 11.  "But"...don't you like that?  Oh, that's great.  "...Jehoshabeath, the daughter of the king, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, stole him from among the king's sons who were to be slain, put him and his nurse in a bedchamber.  So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of king Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest, (for she was the sister of Ahaziah,) hid him from Athaliah so that she slew him not.  And he was hidden with them in the house of God"...how long?...six years they hid that...you try to hide a baby for six years (laughter).  They did it and the royal line was down to one little infant hidden six years from a murdering mother who was Satan's tool to destroy the messianic line.  Satan does his best, but he's a loser.

     In chapter 23, "And in the seventh year Jehoiada strengthened himself, took the captains of hundreds,  Azariah, the son of Jeroham, and Ishmael," and all those names, "went into Judah, gathered the Levites out of all the cities of Judah, and the heads of the fathers of Israel came to Jerusalem.  And all the congregation made a covenant with the king in the house of God.  And he said unto them, 'Behold, the king's son shall reign, as the Lord hath said of the sons of'"...whom?..."'of David.'"  And it was reduced to that one and they said "he shall reign as the Lord said."  Satan was thwarted again.

     You remember in the book of Esther, the attempt that was made in the book of Esther to destroy, literally, the whole Jewish people in a wholesale slaughter.  And you remember what happened?  The people of Israel were saved because one king couldn't sleep one night.  And in the midst of his inability to sleep, he got a guy to read him the scripture and he read him the right scripture, God turned his heart around and God spared Israel and that kept the messianic line.  Then you remember there was Herod and Herod slew all the babies that he could get his hands on, but there was one that went to Egypt.  Who was it?...Jesus.  And Satan was foiled again.  And then Satan attempted to destroy Christ by tempting Him and that failed.  And then he attempted to get a bunch of people to push Him off a cliff in Nazareth and that didn't work.  And then he finally thought he had Him and he nailed Him to a cross and three days later, God raised Him from the dead. 

     Beloved, Satan and God have been at it a long time.  Satan hasn't won yet, but Satan always attacks...watch...always attacks God, God's people and God's program.  And he was attempting in every one of those instances to do just that.  And he isn't done.  Believe me, he isn't done.  He's attacking the church today with everything he's got, mostly by infiltration, which he has learned is the most effective. 

     In Revelation chapter 12, there's gonna be a war in the heavenlies and the demons and Satan are gonna fight Michael and the holy angels.  And when the demons...and this is interesting...when the demons and the holy angels fight in Heaven, the holy angels win.  And the demons get thrown to the earth.  And when they hit the earth, that's the beginning of what the Bible calls the Great Tribulation - all those demons hitting the earth and all of the bound demons who are temporarily bound, coming out of the pit and you have a convergence of all the demons on the earth and that brings about the terrible time known as the Great Tribulation.  It is at that point that Satan says, I'm gonna destroy Israel.  But he tries and it isn't successful.  That's in chapter 12.  He raises up a man and this man that he raises up to attempt to destroy Israel is the man that he wants to give all the strength of every conqueror that ever lived.  So that this man can get a grip on the world that Jesus can't unlock when He returns.  Do you see?  You see, Satan is trying to reverse the plan that he knows God has already outlined.  And he wants to get a guy who is so strong, who has such tremendous power over the earth, that when Christ returns, He will not be able to wrest the kingdom of the earth from this strong man.  Satan brings forth this man in the Tribulation.

     Look at Revelation 13, verse 1...you don't need to look at it now.  I'll read it to you.  We'll get there later.  It says this...it reads in the Authorized, "I stood upon the sand of the sea."  That is not the right reading.  The best reading is "He stood upon the sand of the sea."  It is Satan.  And Satan stands at the sand of the sea and he calls forth his man.  And he said, "I saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads, ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy."  Now, Satan calls forth this man and this man is going to be one of Satan's great efforts to destroy the people and the plan of God. 

     Now, he's a man that is absolutely a fantastic personality.  Let me just give you a little bit of information about him.  And for most of this information, you might turn to the book of Daniel.  We're gonna be there for awhile and I'll show you some things.  I'm gonna run by some thoughts to begin with and then we'll look at them later in more detail.  So you may not want to follow verse by verse in your Bibles as we go, but rather listen. 

     First of all, this man...and remember this, folks, in every capacity, it seems as though he will be as equal to or superior to any man who ever lived.  One, he will be an intellectual genius.  In Daniel, chapter 7 and verse 8, it indicates something about him.  His eyes were "like the eyes of a man."  And the eyes are used in prophetic terms to speak of intelligence.  In verse 20, again, this interesting fact that the "horn that had eyes."  And here is a reference to intelligence.  You remember back in Genesis 3:5 that Satan promised that when they ate the fruit, their "eyes" would be opened and they would know what God knows.  So eyes are connected with intelligence.  He is an intellectual genius. 

     Second, he is an outstanding orator.  The same two verses, 7:8 and 7:20 say he has a mouth and what a mouth...speaking "great things."  Verse 20:  "A mouth that spoke very great things."  And even his looks in verse 20 "was more stout than his fellows."  He will be a commanding personality and when he speaks, he will be an outstanding orator.

     He will also be a master politician.  In Daniel, chapter 11, verse 21, it gives you a little idea of the mastery of his political prowess.  "And in his estate"...this is, of course, the reference to the man coming here..."shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honor of the kingdom, and he shall come in peaceably and obtain the kingdom by flatteries"..."by flatteries."  Now, this can have a dual reference and we'll see a little later about that.  But, specifically, the long-range view is the picture of Antichrist.  And you remember in Revelation 6:2 that it says he comes with a bow but has no arrows, which means that he conquers peacefully.  And here it simply says, "he comes in peaceably and obtains the kingdom by flattery."  He's a master politician. 

     Fourthly, he is a commercial wizard.  In the area of the commercial, we find Daniel 8:25 reflecting upon the man.  "Through his policy"...that's a very current word..."through his policy also he shall cause deceit to prosper in his hand."  Commercially, he'll make a fortune.  And, incidentally, you can read in Revelation 18 about the tremendous world materialistic empire that he builds...nothing like it in the history of man. 

     Fifthly, he is a military genius.  He is a military genius.  In Daniel 7:23 it says that he will "devour the whole earth, tread it down and break it in pieces."  It even tells us that he going to worship the god of power.  In Revelation 13:4 it tells us the same thing. 

     Lastly, of these little brief statements, he is a religious leader.  He comes in and he turns the whole world's religion to focusing on him.  He lets the false church exist for a little while according to Revelation 17 and then he gobbles it up and demands the whole world worship him, sets himself up in the temple as the only god to be worshipped.  This is a superman.  He is Satan's great, climactic effort to hold the world, to capture the world, so that Christ cannot return and take it.  See? 

     Now, tonight, we're gonna look at this man.  Now, let me remind you that we are dealing in the period known as the Tribulation.  The church is taken out of the world and then comes the Tribulation.  And we are now concentrating on the nations.  We've looked at what Israel's gonna be doing during the Tribulation.  They're gonna be being chastised and being saved.  And here's what the nations are going to be doing.  Now, we gave you several things that we're going to be discussing in future weeks:  the times of the nations in the Tribulation, the ruler of the nations, the alignment of the nations, the religion of the nations, the war of the nations and the judgment of the nations. 

     Now, last week we talked about the times of the nations.  And we mentioned to you that Jesus gave us the term "the times of the nations," a very specific term.  And the times of the nations is the time that Jerusalem will be trodden down by outside powers.  And we told you that that began in approximately 600 B.C. and keeps going till the second coming of Christ, all of those years in there, at least 2,600 years, nearly.  That whole time is going to be committed over to the nations trodding down Jerusalem.  The prophet, Ezekiel...we saw last time we studied this...saw Ichabod written on Israel.  The glory departed from Israel and immediately Nebuchadnezzar came in and took them away to Babylon and that began the times of the nations. 

     Now, this period is the period when nations dominate Israel.  The book of Daniel was written for this period.  It describes in detail what went on when Israel was in Babylon.  It was written right at the time.  It gives us the historical panorama, also, of the history of the times of the nations.  Now go back to chapter 2 for just a brief review and let me use an illustration here to help you.  In chapter 2 and verse...well, 31, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream.  He couldn't remember the dream and he couldn't remember what it was supposed to mean.  So that set it up for Daniel to come and give him all the answers.  "Thou, O king," verse 31, "sawest, and behold a great image."  And this is the image that he saw.  "This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee, and the form of it was terrible.  This image's head was of fine gold"...indication there..."its breast and arms of silver"...indicated by the absence of color..."its belly and thighs of bronze and its legs of iron and its feet part of iron and part of clay."  Then he said, "Thou sawest a stone"...and the stone, of course, represents Christ..."cut out without hands"...virgin born..."which smote the image upon its feet that were of iron and clay and broke them to pieces."  And here the stone came.  Now, notice that Christ is going to smash the last facet of the Gentile world empire in His return.  He is the stone cut out without hands.  "Then were the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, the gold broken to pieces together, became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors and the wind carried them away and no place was found for them."  That's the end of Gentile rule.  "And the stone that smote the earth became a great mountain and filled the whole earth."  And there's the kingdom.  Christ smashes this, it crumbles, blows away and Christ fills the earth in His glorious millennial kingdom. 

     Now, Daniel interpreted this very beautifully and he begins his interpretation in 36.  "This is the dream and we will tell its interpretation..."  "Thou, O king, art a king of kings, for the God of Heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, strength and glory.  And wherever the children of men dwell and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heavens, hath He given into thine hand and hath made thee ruler over them all.  Thou art this head of gold."  And that's the indication right here.  Babylon is represented by the head of gold.  It was the most strong kingdom because it was an absolute monarchy.  And that's the first dominion of Gentile power.  The second one, represented by silver, indicated in verse 39, "after thee shall arise a kingdom inferior to thee."  It was the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians, Media and Persia coming together.  And any time you have a union like that of two forces, you have a weakness.  And the third kingdom was bronze and this was Greece and this was the rule of Alexander and it was even inferior ______ divided into the four generals, it deteriorated.  The fourth kingdom is the kingdom that is iron and that represents Rome.  And then there will be a last phase of it, verse 41, "And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes"...ten of them..."part of potters' clay and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided."  And Rome was, too, the eastern Roman and the western Roman empire.  "The kingdom shall be divided, there shall be in it of the strength of the iron forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with the miry clay.  And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so shall the kingdom be partly strong and partly brittle"..."partly brittle."  Now, watch.  The fourth kingdom is Rome.  It's final phase is gonna be a ten-toed confederacy.  This is reiterated clearly in the book of Revelation.  Now, notice what follows it.  Carefully notice it.  Verse 44, "And in the days of these kings," beloved, there will be no more world kingdoms than those four.  Do you hear?  But in the days of the final form of the Roman kingdom...now, remember in the book of Revelation and what we told you in our last study two weeks ago very clearly.  This will be a ten-king confederacy.  Did we not say that?  And how do we know that?  Well, you're saying you're sure making a lot out of ten toes.  Maybe that beast only had eight.  No, no, it had ten.  That's indicated in chapter 7, verse 7.  It had an indication of a ten-fold kingdom.  If you go over to chapter 7, verse 24, "And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise."  The final form of Roman rule is going to be a ten-nation confederacy.  Now, what have we been telling you all along?  That we are now seeing in Europe the revival of the Roman Empire in the European economic community or the Common Market, which is currently now, toying with a ten-nation confederacy.  Just exactly what the Bible said would happen clearly.  Now, whether this is the final phase, I don't know, but it's certainly a forerunner.  Immediately following that, verse 44 of 2 says:  "In the days of these kings shall the God of Heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed."  Then how many kingdoms are there gonna be?...four and four alone, right?  And after that fourth one, then the kingdom is gonna be set up by whom?...by God.  And how long is it gonna last?...forever.  There will never be a fifth kingdom.  The final phase of the Roman Empire...and you know there never has been a world power since Rome.  Rome fell into dissolution and today the old territory of Rome is coming together in what we call the European Common Market.  At least it's a forerunner.  

     Now, notice, friends.  This is God's plan for the history of the nations.  Now, what do you think Satan would like to do more than anything else?...mess up that plan.  I believe that what Satan would want to do would be to add a fifth world kingdom.  That's one way he could foul up God's plan, couldn't he?  You say, did Satan ever try to do that?...of course.  I think he tried to do it not too many years ago through Russia.  Maybe we're gonna see that in the future he may try to do it through Red China.  I don't know; that's just a guess.  But I'll tell you, I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that at one time, he definitely tried to do it through Hitler's Germany.  I don't have any question about that.  And I want to show you why I say that.  And I'm gonna digress for a moment to show you some things that I think shall be of interest to you.

     Now, I was alive, but totally uninvolved at the age of four when Hitler was around.  And so I hasten to add that this is a matter of research, rather than a personal experience.  Some of you can talk from personal experience about those days.  Hitler, without question, was demonic.  Hitler and the efforts of the demons behind him were clearly laid out to establish a world government.  Hitler wanted to rule the world.  He said that over and over again.  In fact, he kept talking about setting up a super race of men who would rule the world.  He was totally controlled by demons.  He is a prime example of what an antichrist would be.  He is a prime example of a Judas, whom Satan entered and he carried out the work of Satan.  You say, now, where do you get this?  Well, the information I'm gonna give you in a moment comes from a book entitled The Morning of the Magicians.  If you're interested in this, that's the book:  The Morning of the Magicians.  It is written by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier.  It is not a Christian book.  It is a historical analysis of all of the documents left from Germany at that time, including the records of the Nuremburg trials and tremendous volumes of eyewitness events, etc., etc., etc.  And in this book the authors present their case and their case, really, is that Hitler was totally controlled by outside influences other than this world.  That's their case.  And I'm quoting:  "It is impossible to understand Hitler's political plans unless one is familiar with his basic beliefs and his conviction that there is a magic relationship between man and the universe."  They say in the book that Hitler was fascinated by ideas of mysticism and became totally immersed in them.  He saw the miracle of his own destiny as the action of unseen forces, the same forces responsible for his preaching a new gospel to humanity.  __________________Satan want to do to get rid of the old one.  Quote, "The Enneads of Plotinus were read during the war in the little mystical societies of pro-German intellectuals together with ancient Hindu texts, nishi and Tibetan magicians.  The probable explanation for Hitler's deeds is the existence of a magical puzzle, a powerful and satanic mystical current."  This is pretty observing from some worldly minds.  And they write their book as a warning.  They said this:  "We shall never be safe from Nazism, or rather from certain manifestations of the satanic, which through the Nazis, cast its dark shadow over the world, until we have roused ourselves to full understanding of the most fantastic aspects of the Hitlerian adventure."  Hitler was a man out to conquer the world, but he was more than that. 

     There is another book, a book written by Eric Norman titled The Hollow Earth.  And, incidentally, the book I gave you first was published in 1969.  This book, The Hollow Earth, was published in 1972.  And in the book The Hollow Earth, he says that there was a macabre, hollow earth mystery that was the Nazi-oriented secret occult society in Hitler's regime.  Now, this is an old, old theory of the occult, that in the center of the earth, demons dwell.  Advance beings occupy the hollow earth.  Have you ever heard of Rosicrucianism?  There's one of them right down the street here.  Have you heard of the Theosophy Society?  That's all of this.  It's all involved.  But the hollow earth theory said that the hollow earth was occupied by advanced beings and they have powers far beyond human beings and they were going to emerge in time and conquer the earth.  And these beings were the lords of the universe and when they surfaced, they would destroy everybody who wasn't already allied to them.  And so Hitler was totally convinced, along with all of his co-workers, that they had to be alive to the forces in the hollow earth.  Boy, you start believing that kind of stuff and Satan will move right on in and take over.  Eric Norman records, page 17 and 18 of the book, "Nazi records seized after the fall of the Third Reich indicate that Hitler and his henchman launched several expeditions to the hollow earth," end quote.  Hitler got his concept of using children, you know, children to report on their parents, children to kill people, he got that all from the occultists writings regarding the hollow earth.  And from it he formed the core of adolescent werewolves with their black uniforms and the death's head insignias on the sleeves.  You study Hitler's Third Reich and you'll find the whole thing was whetted to black occultism, that there was, for example, the Society of the Golden Dawn.  And this society was founded for the practice of black magic.  And they were in contact with super beings.  This society believed that these super beings came from the hollow earth so the whole thing tied together.  One of Hitler's most prominent generals whose name you may recall, Haushofer, was one of the earliest members of the German Golden Dawn Society and he advised Hitler to write Mein Kampf, which is Hitler's Struggle.  Haushofer who was a medium himself...he was a black magician and we would call him a warlock...Haushofer himself had visited India, China, Tibet, he had adopted Buddhist belief, he was initiated into a secret Buddhist society.  It was an amazing society.  They dealt with a mission regarding death and if anybody failed to accomplish this mission of killing, he would have to sacrifice a human being on the Buddhist altar and then kill himself.  It's interesting because when Haushofer was found dead...this same general...he had just slaughtered his wife on a Buddhist altar and then killed himself.  And Hitler also, apparently killed himself.  Why?  Every one of the individuals on the inside of forming Nazism were members of the occult society plugged into the demons in the hollow earth.  Now, Hitler also had psychic gifts, says Norman.  Quote, "He successfully predicted when Nazi troops would conquer Paris.  He predicted accurately the German occupation of the Rhineland and the death of Roosevelt."  He was plugged into demonic forces.  Norman also points out, incidental