Prelude to the anti-christ - Part 6

The Mystery of Iniquity – Part 6

“Dr. James Dobson pleads for our action,” or so the latest version of the Petition to Ban Religious Broadcasting goes. This petition alleges that according to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Petition – RM 2493, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, a widely known, self proclaimed atheist, has formally requested that the FCC consider banning religious broadcasting. Although O’Hair was murdered more than 15 years ago, her name is still affixed to variations of this phantom petition, which claims that Joel Osteen, TD Jakes, Joyce Myer, Creflo Dollar, Charles Stanley and others are at risk of being removed from the airwaves.

According to the FCC, In December 1974, Jeremy D. Lansman and Lorenzo W. Milam filed petition RM-2493 asking the FCC to deny all new license requests for any new noncommercial educational broadcast station until it completed an investigation of the operating practices of the stations that offered religious programming. The FCC denied this petition on August 1, 1975, and since then, it has handled more than 31 million letters, telephone calls, faxes and emails asking that they deny O’Hair’s request. This bogus effort to distract God’s people is a graphic illustration that nothing can marshal the forces of Christianity with more enthusiasm than a ghost. While real satanic destruction is taking place in our society, millions of well intentioned, but naïve people have been chasing a figment of someone’s imagination. This is truly remarkable and borders on the unbelievable; especially considering that most Christians claim to have spiritual insight, foresight and discernment.

This FCC petition hoax is part of a procession of pranks and swindles that are intended to cheat, steal, and destroy. Conmen, peddling bogus cures for physical ailments or guaranteeing enormous returns on investments, have been a fixture in every society for centuries. These men deceitfully gain your confidence by skillfully disarming you of your natural tendency to view with suspicion anything that sounds too good to be true: the grieving widow who announces via an unsolicited email that her very wealthy husband recently died in Nigeria, and the country is making it difficult for her to gain access to his estate. However by giving her your name, bank account information and in some cases, a social security number, she will give you one third of a $21 million estate as compensation if you permit her to transfer the money into your bank account.

The Nigerian Chain Letter has less to do with deceiving someone than it does with playing on one’s illusion that there are free lunches in society. However, I must concede with astonishment that Americans are still being deceived by this fraud; that someone would blindly hand over their personal identity to a stranger from Nigeria is quite stunning. This brings new meaning to the phrase, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” History demonstrates that there is no scarcity of people, whose shortsighted trust in human nature believes that the finer things in life can be acquired with little more than the promise of a con-artist. The great calamities of human civilization – war; rape; genocide; hunger; famine; disease; and the list goes on, are the direct result of the greatest con-artist of them all: lucifer.

[l]ucifer, one of God’s elite, created beings, secretly plotted to ascend above the angelic host in power and prestige in an effort to be like God. This was no noble objective to be like God, as followers of Christ attempt to be like Him. This was an attempt to become equal to God in glory and majesty. Pride according to Isaiah, convinced lucifer that he could share God’s glory:

^12.How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! ^13.For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: ^14.I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High (Isaiah 14:12-14, emphasis mine).

The subject of lucifer’s angelic rebellion is possibly the most complex in the Scripture and is certainly beyond the scope of this short article. However, the notion that an angel would abandon everything he ever held sacred over a delusion of grandeur is a concept that I cannot remotely grasp. That lucifer would act on an impulse to share God’s throne and then conceive a scheme that was clever enough to enlist a significant portion of his angelic colleagues, is a mystery that I believe has been shut out of the realm of human comprehension. This dramatic epoch in the unrecorded expanse of the past, gives us a glimpse into lucifer’s extraordinary skill at deceiving. Certainly I am not here to applaud his rebellion or his ability; however, under any ordinary circumstance, I would consider it impossible for so many angels to be snared by a trap from one of their fellow compatriots.

The scripture does not give any clues regarding the scheme that satan used to destroy Heaven’s tranquility. However, by injecting a little deductive reasoning into the cause(s) of the angelic fall, it is my belief that lucifer tricked the angels into worshipping him as they would worship God. Consequently, there is no greater act of aggression than to preempt God’s majesty by putting one’s self in a position to be worshipped by men, angles or beasts. The first three commandments prohibit the honor, the creation, and/or the worship of any false god (see Exodus 20:2-5), and lucifer’s declaration…I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the most high, at a minimum, suggests that he had a reckless disregard for God’s sovereignty.

Though there are no direct Scriptures to back my claim, if we analyze satan’s pathology throughout the Scripture, one of the dominant themes of his appearances is his desire/need to be worshipped: It goes without saying that he is the motivation behind all false worship; and more notably, we see the children of Israel worshipping the golden calf (see Exodus 32:4); we see King Nebuchadnezzar forcing his subjects to bow to an idol (see Daniel 3:1-7); we see lucifer himself tempting Jesus to bow to him in the wilderness (see Matthew 4:8-9); and during the end of the age, satan will deploy a plan on a nearly surreal scale that will inspire all the people of the earth to worship the son of perdition (see Revelation 13:3-4).

I offer my premise on lucifer’s rebellion simply for perspective, but I have studied other theologians who teach that lucifer attempted to overthrow God with a coup d’état. They use the Scriptures in Revelation 12:7-9 where there was war in Heaven and lucifer was cast out with all of his followers to buttress their position. The reason I am not so inclined to accept this premise is because wars can be declared over issues other than coup attempts. God, or even the archangel Michael, could have declared war on lucifer and his cohorts, but more importantly, it was not a war in the protracted sense. Jesus told us that He saw satan fall from Heaven like lightening: And He said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven (Luke 10:18). This Scripture seems to suggest that at a particular threshold in the battle, lucifer was cast out of the Heaven at the speed of light; this, I would presume, was when God Almighty stepped in.

What lucifer did – whether he deceived the angelic host into worshiping him or he deceived the angels into assisting in his aim to overthrow God – is really less revealing about his astonishing skill at deception than how he was able to successfully convince angels to rebel against God. Notwithstanding what he did during that fateful episode, what could lucifer have possibly said to legions of angels to have them follow him into what is the heavenly equivalent of a kamikaze mission?! It must have been a masterpiece of deceit. In fact, I believe that a divine mandate has been issued that will conceal forever the blow-by-blow account of satan’s rebellion; from the planning to the campaigning to the execution of the deceit. Since he was able to manufacture a plan that deceived angels, then human reasoning would be no match. Consequently, by censoring this grand rebellion, God has eliminated the possibility that any well meaning, but naïve individuals will see the logic in it, which will deny satan of a useful tool to recruit followers.

It would be a series error in judgement to underestimate satan’s ability to deceive; even in his fallen state. When Michael the archangel challenged satan for possession of Moses’ body, he did not depend on his war-time skills, but used the name of the Lord against him: Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee (Jude 9). Apostle John was so concerned about those who were underestimating satan that in his letter to the Church at Thyatira, he suggested to those who did not know the depth of satan’s ability that he would alert them of his skill upon his arrival: But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden. But that which ye have already hold fast till I come (Revelation 2:24-25).

[l]ucifer has deceived angels, pharaohs, kings, apostles, bishops, and presidents. In other words, men and women, many who are at the summit of political, business, philanthropic, and religious leadership, have fallen prey to his remarkable ability to deceive. History is bursting at the seams with businessmen, politicians, philanthropists, and ministers who had piously vowed to promote integrity, honesty and the best interest of the people they served, only to discover that their good intentions were no shelter from satan’s ability to furtively manipulate them into betraying their sacred oath.

…to be continued

NOTE: About the Prelude to the anti-christ: I will be publishing a 18 part series titled, Prelude to the anti-christ, which will be divided into three segments: First, The Mystery of Iniquity will be a 6-part series that demonstrate that there has been a furtive hand in the affairs of humanity to create the rich soil for the anti-christ to rise; second, Western Civilization’s Unrelenting Expansion will be a 8-part expose on Western Civilization’s effort to control the destiny of human civilization; and third, The Rise of the anti-christ will be a 3-part series on the rise of the global leader who will lead humanity over the precipice into oblivion; and the final article will be a summary and postscript of the entire sequence of series. The introduction to this series was published on Sunday, January 23, 2011, and each subsequent article will be published on each successive Sunday through May. Your comments are welcome.

© 2011 by David R. Tolson