Read in the light of Scripture
The Times We Live In
The world can show us our need. Only Christ can answer it.
Jesus told His disciples not to be troubled by the noise of their age. Wars, famines and the rise and fall of nations must come to pass, but they are not yet the end.
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome each believed that its knowledge and power would last. Each fell. Our own age has more technology than any before it, and the human heart is the same: violence, fear and emptiness remain, because no politics, treaty or invention can do what only reconciliation with God can do. I do not write this page to alarm anyone. I write it because the times are a mirror, and Scripture tells us how to read them.
The serpent’s first words
The oldest promises are being offered again, now in the language of technology.
- “Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4): the promise of immortality through artificial intelligence, digital consciousness and transhumanism.
- “Ye shall be as gods” (Genesis 3:5): human power and knowledge raised up as if they had no limit and needed no Creator.
- “Yea, hath God said?” (Genesis 3:1): the doubt cast on every absolute truth, while a new “reality” is offered on a screen.
These are not new promises. They are the serpent’s first words in new clothes, and they lead where they led in the garden.
A falling away
Paul warned of a falling away (2 Thessalonians 2:3), and Jesus warned that many false prophets would rise and deceive many (Matthew 24:11). Much of what is taught in churches today bears that out. The gospel is often watered down. The plain witness of Scripture on creation and on the worldwide flood is set aside in favor of evolution and billions of years. Yet Jesus Himself said that His return would be as the days of Noah were (Matthew 24:37). His second coming, central to the faith, is rarely preached.
The ecumenical movement draws the churches back toward Rome, and Rome reaches out to every faith. In 2019 the Document on Human Fraternity, signed in Abu Dhabi by the Pope and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, declared that “the pluralism and the diversity of religions” are “willed by God in His wisdom”. That stands against the words of Christ, who said that He is “the way, the truth, and the life” and that “no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Unity bought at the price of the truth is not peace.
The power that stands in Christ’s place
The world longs for peace and unity, and it will follow whoever promises them. Scripture describes a power the whole world would follow:
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
The Reformers read Revelation 13 as one power with two faces: Rome’s civil power, and its clerical power, the beast that “had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon” (Revelation 13:11). It looks gentle and Christlike, but it speaks with the dragon’s authority. Rome names its own pontiff with the word Scripture uses for the enemy of Christ. The Greek antichristos means one who stands in the place of Christ, and Vicarius Iesu Christi, the papal title in canon law since 1199, means exactly that: substitute of Jesus Christ. This deception is not still waiting to arrive. It has stood for centuries.
This is a judgment on a system and its claims, never on the people inside it. God alone weighs the heart.
The true Messiah came in the opposite way. He did not come with political power or worldly glory. He was born in a manger and died on a cross, and God raised Him from the dead. He came first as the Lamb and will return as the Lion of Judah. He was rejected by His own, and He told them what would follow:
I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.
Knowing the real Jesus
The protection against every counterfeit is not a better knowledge of the counterfeit. It is knowing the real Jesus, who already came: His heart, His character and His ways. Whoever knows Him will recognize an imposter, however great the signs that come with it.
For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
If it were possible. Those who stand in Christ are kept. That is why everything on this site begins with the Gospel, and why I would ask you to begin there too.