Considering Emerging End-Time Signs: Part 3:: By Gene Lawley

As this current indication of an end-time sign continues to unfold, it appears to have prophetic support from the words of 2 Thessalonians 2:3, which says, ” Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed….” The uncertainty of how long the falling away will continue remains in God’s timing, for Jesus has said, “No one knows the day nor the hour of His coming.” This sign that is developing also has in its formation the opening of a new phase of God’s plan, as the two incidents are compared.

When Pilate asked the question at the trial of Jesus Christ, “What is truth?” he had been looked at wrongly, as if he was stalling for time, but not so. He had seen strange tactics for a Roman politician who had been under Roman law for a long time. Roman law, from the background of Latin, as I understand it, has the foundation of jurisprudence and judicial proceedings that extends even into today’s courts of law.

The Jewish people were subjects of the Roman government but proclaimed that they had the truth in their laws from Moses. But Pilate had examined Jesus quite thoroughly and said, “I find no fault in Him, and neither did Herod. He has done nothing worthy of death.” Their response was, Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Then, “Give us Barabbas instead!”

Pilate had seen them violate their own laws of truth during the mock trial. They had violated these judicial precepts:

1. They were ready to kill an innocent Man, the seventh commandment.
2. They were accepting false witnesses, the ninth commandment.
3. They were not allowing any witnesses for the defense, a violation of “justice for all.”
4. They were totally given to rejection of any evidence of His true identity, even though each time they had asked for a sign of that, His answers had been rejected. His evidence had never been honestly searched out in Scripture because they did not want Him changing their way of life.

Looking at God’s eternal plan, it is clear that Jesus was to be crucified for the sins of the whole world. They were blinded by their hate, and God allowed it to be so. In 1 Corinthians 2:7-8, Paul wrote this: “But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” They followed their own inclinations, however, and will face the judgment of God for that.

Paul said clearly, “He has made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Thus, God stood back and let evil’s incessant desire take every opportunity to move into any place where God is not resisting it. That is Satan’s way of opposing God, for he only comes to “steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10a).

This unjust trial brought on the great change in God’s plan for mankind in that the coming of Jesus Christ was the introduction of the New Covenant in His blood, replacing the Old Covenant based on obedience to the law of Moses, a covenant of works, not faith. (This “change” was not God changing His mind and letting them crucify Jesus but a change in His plan’s operation as it moved forward to the next phase of its eternal purpose.)

It had been “foreshadowed” all along by the offering of animals on an altar in the temple (Hebrews 10:1), and believing in and keeping those annual sacrifices was required. It was not a permanent solution.

Jesus was crucified, and the gospel of salvation by faith in Him was reality. The last command that Jesus made to His disciples just before He ascended into heaven was to go into all the world with that message and confront people with it for their eternal salvation (Acts 1:8). Now, it has been nearly 2,000 years of that missionary effort.

With that Great Commission, Jesus said, “And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). What then? We believers will be with Him, for that next big event is the coming “ingathering” of His body of believers, both the dead and those still living.

As Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep [died], lest you sorrow as others who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Then he continues with details of the Rapture of the saints in verses 16-17). On God’s calendar is the Feast of Trumpets, which is His “ingathering” at the last harvest of this age. How will God introduce that major change in how He relates to His body of believers? As the crucifixion of Christ and its attending rejection of truth and justice resulted in a major forward movement of God’s plan of redemption, a similar rejection of truth and justice seems to be preceding that great “ingathering” of these last days.

(The following comparison of similar tactics of the opposing forces in this series of trials has many signs not unlike those of the judicial violations in the trial of Jesus Christ. I am not comparing Donald Trump to Jesus Christ on the basis of Christ’s deity. Trump is not deity; he is an Adam-based sinner like the rest of us. What is the same, unchanged since Adam, is the evilness of mankind, which shows up in the comparison of the two trains—of Jesus and that one coming, or attempted, of Donald Trump.

God is sovereign, and He can name one whom He will use for His purposes years before that one even exists. Take the matter of that Persian king named Cyrus, whom Isaiah named some 200 years before he came on the scene to be God’s man. Cyrus would allow Ezra to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple in 539 B.C. Isaiah wrote his prophecy about 740 to 700 B.C. So, is it not interesting that we would come to the end of this age, and it does appear so, that God would use a man named Trump to be involved in bringing to pass that “Last Trump” as the original King James version translation of the Bible calls it? Coincidental, meaningless, or what, in the presence of a God who knows all things before they happen.

This man Trump was one of the elite, supposedly a billionaire non-politician who was not likely to become a threat to the makers and owners of presidents. But then he challenged their front-runner to produce his long-form birth certificate. Wow! That put those makers and breakers into a panic to produce one, and quickly. Later, that one so targeted exclaimed just before the 2008 election, “We are just five days away from fundamentally transforming America forever!” And as he was nearing the end of his second term, he made this observation, “The end of the Republic has never looked better!” (For world control.)

In considering the similar abuses of judicial practice that are repeated in the ongoing opposition to Trump, we can see the following facts:

1. His opponents have impeached him twice to no avail and continue with multiple charges so that the last straw not yet attempted is an assassination, at least not known about. (You shall not kill.)
2. They have gathered multitudes of false witnesses who cannot be proven as true. (You shall not bear false witness.)
3. The procedures have always been one-sided, that is, unjust, when “justice for all” is USA law and God’s way as well.
4. Trump’s opposition has charged him with any possible violation of any law they can find, whether it fits the occasion or not.

It is reported that if he is proven guilty of all of the charges against him, the total jail time would be over 600 years! They want Trump out of circulation, no matter what it takes. He has so revealed the “scum of the DC swamp,” as he calls it, and their plan to control the world, that he must be put away.

But how does this have anything to do with the end of this age? Just as the crucifixion of Christ was God’s way of introducing the New Covenant in His blood, He is, it seems, allowing a totally evil system to reveal its coming judgment as the godly members of the population are taken out of the way of that judgment. That is, the “ingathering” of the believers in Christ. The “falling away” will become “the only way” as Jesus comes and removes His representation on earth, and the lawless one takes control for his eventual termination.

As soon as that happens, the prophecy of Daniel 9:26-27 comes into fulfillment. The interesting insert Paul makes with 1 Thessalonians 5:3 has a message that summarizes the next seven years for the Jewish people, it seems. Then verse 4 clinches the assurance of salvation for the believer in Christ: “But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief.”

So it will be, as He said.

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