A philosopher once denigrated John the revelator by saying that he, John must have been on hallucinogenic drugs while writing and compiling the book of Revelation. He is right in a way, John was in a rapturous state.
I wonder who is having the last laugh as John’s prophecies come to pass. I also wonder what 1st and 2nd century christian believers would have thought of the letters and the book of Revelation: most of them not having the panoramic views we have today of the world and the heavenlies.
They knew of the world being under Roman domination. They knew of the Near East, the three Magi visiting Jesus. However, they did not know of The Americas, Australia, and the uttermost parts of the Earth.
They knew of the Roman emperors, but we have John looking the corridors of history, seeing into the future annals, and talking about the G8, the United Nations, the European Union: presidents, and kings giving up their sovereignties to an individual who heads a one world government, the Antichrist( AC).
How about the unusual resurgence of the phenomenon of antisemitism? John predicted it. Immediately Jesus was taken to Heaven, the great red Dragon, Satan, was mad, and pursued the Woman and her offspring the state of Israel, and the Jewish people, and the christians who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ( rev.12:17). This brilliant people, constituting less than 1% of world population- with the highest Nobel Prize winners per capita of any people- are hated, hounded and persecuted, even gassed, for no reason other than that they are Jews, by races who have benefited most from the greatest Jew that ever lived- Jesus Christ our Lord. These persecutors are just instruments of the Dragon as John foretold.
Only the Holy Spirit could have got the Book of Revelation into the cannon of the Scriptures, the Bible. Those taxed with the difficult job of compiling the cannon of the NT must have thought of deleting or axing the Book of Revelation because most of it was of no relevance to them. However this irrelevant book of two millennia ago, is now, probably the most relevant book to believers who want to watch for the coming of our Lord and the antics of the Antichrist.
While the world talk about geopolitics, we the believers should be aware and focused on COSMOPOLITICS, as annunciated in the Books of Revelation, Daniel, Matthew 24,25, Mark 13, and Luke 17& 21. Another writer, Joel Rosenberg, called it, looking at world events with the third lens of the Scriptures. With this lens, he was able to predict world events. For example, terrorism and 9/11, and the re-emergence of renegade Russia. Cosmopolitics does more than predict history; it determines world events. And to the sensitive believer, the future history and world events are laid bare. It also helps us to understand the goings-on in our world, particularly the end times.
Let me use events in the Bible to show how cosmopolitics works. A familiar cosmoplitical event was the return of Jews to the land of Israel after 70 years in exile in Babylon( Jer.25:11,12; 28:10; Dan.9:2,24). The prophet Daniel searched the scriptures, he believe it and acted on it in prayers. Heavenly battles were fought before the release of Jews from exile in Babylon and their return to the land of Israel after 70 years of sojourning in exile in Babylon( Dan.9:1-23).
An earlier stretch of history determined in the heavens before it came to pass on Earth, was the 430-year sojourn and gradual enslavement of Israelites in Egypt before bursting forth as a nation into the promised land. These events have some uncanny resemblance to these last days before the Rapture.
We are told that Egypt of the Pharaohs represents the World to christians. The Jews, despite 430 years in Egypt never became assimilated into Egypt. They remained separate and distinct as we christians should be separate, distinct and distinguishable from the world in which we sojourn as strangers, ambassadors and emissaries of heaven. Our citizenship is in the heavens; from when also we look for our Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like into His glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things into Himself( Phil.3:20,21). However, the Israelites through Joseph did play a role in the bondage and enslavement of the Egyptians to the Pharaoh, a figure of the Antichrist( Gen.37:12-26). In a way, christian nations are at the fore of enslavement of the people of the world to the Antichrist and his world system.
After severe tribulations, the Israel of God, were “raptured”into the promised land. This Old Testament event foreshadows the real rapture about to happen.
When Paul received the Macedonian call, it determined the geographical course of history. If Paul had turned East into Arabia, Europe would not be the early bastion of Christianity that it was for centuries. The Americas would have been laid bare to paganism and human sacrifice as exemplified by the Inca and Aztec civilizations. Africa would have remained dark also.
However, Paul’s route had been cut out for him millennia earlier when our Lord said Ishmael was not to park in the spiritual inheritance of Abraham. Ishmaelites lived in Arabia. What was the gospel through Paul going to do there? So, he turned west.
The 1914 almagamation of northern and southern Nigeria came under cosmopolitics. The Ishmaelites were making a dash for the Atlantic coast from Mediterranean North Africa. Our Lord came to rescue and redeem us through the arrival of christian Europe on the west coast of Africa. They took control of the protectorates in the continent they called their colonies, thus protecting us from the Ismaelites. Freedom of religion was established, and the gospel pushed north from the coast. Those in subsaharan Africa who were the Lord’s from the foundation of he world remained redeemable. Now the Ismaelites are kicking back. For example Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali, Al-Shabab in Somalia and Kenya etc. Is this a reawakening or the death throes of the last days of Islam?
Back to the future, Revelation chapters 13,14 &15, predict the ascendancy and final revealing of the Antichrist, also known as the Beast, and his enforcer known as the false prophet. This is followed by the rapture and wrath of God upon the world. Later comes the collapse of religious Babylon( Rev.17), and the collapse of world finance and economies( Rev.18), and the demise of the Beast and his false prophet( Rev.19). Finally Satan himself is dealt with in Rev.20.
These chapters are no longer prophecies as they appeared to believers from the 1st century right to the 20th. They are now current affairs, current geopolitics. One might ask, where is the world government? Please google world government bonds, and you will find it alive and well. I discovered the existence of these bonds in the 1990s in copies of The Economist. Leading world philosophers whom I consider priests of the Antichrist, are preaching a one world government. Other developments and events make such a body a matter of time. These developments include the global convergence of politics, religion and finance, with unitary finance being ahead of politics and religion. (Please See earlier articles, the world financial system and the future of money).
There is also the scientific convergence called singularity. This is driven by networking of world computers into a single operating unit like the central nervous system of the body. Achieving singularity in science, coupled with other scientific advances like cloning would lead to man playing God which happens to be the goal of humanistic evolution. Human hubris will heighten, leading to utter disregard for JEHOVAH.
Believers in Nigeria, and indeed the world over, must start to develop a sense for cosmopolitical and economic events. This has been the biblical story from Genesis through to Revelation. Remember Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the human statue which predicted with uncanny accuracies the rise and fall of the Beast Empires of Satan right up to the End Of The Ages( Dan. 2&7).
Our Master Jesus admonished us to observe and watch out for His return. We can do this by delving regularly into the book of Revelation. With the help of the Holy Spirit, it would not remain the difficult book it is perceived to be. Indeed, it is the most relevant book for our times. Like Daniel, let us search and research the book of Revelation, being on the look out for our Master’s return, and interpreting present happenings in the light of the book of Revelation.
Olugbenga Jaiyesimi.
Mt Zion Heritage Ministries 