Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Their memorial

“A man once wrote a list of 33 names in the Bible that are applicable to the Antichrist. There’s more in the Bible about the Antichrist than anybody else except for the Lord Jesus Christ.

“As ‘the foolish shepherd’ and ‘the idol shepherd’, as ‘the man of sin’ and ‘the son of perdition’, he’s literally the personification of Satan’s program and that’s why he’s called ‘the wicked one’.

“There are whole chapters in the Book of Job about him, and in the Book of Psalms he’s described in very clear terms," explains Richard Jordan.

“People love the psalms. At a funeral, Psalm 23 is often used at the graveside. When you use it in an allegorical sense—'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want’—it is a psalm you understand gives comfort to a lot of people. It’s like the song Amazing Grace.

“Every drunk in an AA Meeting can sing that song. That song doesn’t tell you anything about Jesus Christ, or the gospel, or heaven and hell. It just talks about, ‘I’ve been knocked down, but by the grace of God I’m up and I’m going again.’

“You’ll see it every time there’s a big funeral in the national cathedral. Some big opera singer gets up and sings Amazing Grace. They don’t sing all the verses, though: ‘The Lord has promised good to me,
His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be,
As long as life endures.

“What you get in the Book of Psalms is a look into the heart of the Believing Remnant as they matriculate through the Fifth Course of Judgment, and especially the very end of it. It’s, ‘Here’s the remnant suffering under the heel of the oppressor and they look to the Lord to deliver them.’

“There are doctrines designed to give the believing remnant an internal capacity and fortitude to get through. Now they’re going to have to face this wicked one.

“When you trace through the psalms, there are probably 30-35 of them that directly address this character, and Psalm 10 is the first place he’s called the wicked and this psalm sort of sets the pace for what you’re going to read and learn about him.

Psalm 9: [5] Thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever and ever.
[6] O thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end: and thou hast destroyed cities; their memorial is perished with them.

“There you have the wicked, who are Israel’s enemies, and they’ve got a memorial to themselves. You know what the memorial is—it’s Revelation 13. They’ve got an image made to the wicked one.

Psalm 9:16-17: [16] The LORD is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion. Selah.
[17] The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.

That’s what’s going to happen to them. The psalm ends with the Second Coming: [19] Arise, O LORD; let not man prevail: let the heathen be judged in thy sight.
[20] Put them in fear, O LORD: that the nations may know themselves to be but men. Selah.

Psalm 10, a whole psalm dedicated to the Antichrist, says, [7] His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his tongue is mischief and vanity.
[8] He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor.
[9] He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net.
[10] He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones.

Verse 2 says, "The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined."

“Dozens of times through the minor prophets the text will refer to the poor, but it’s not talking about some folks on Lower Wacker living in a cardboard box. It's a specific reference to a specific group of people at a specific time.

“Jesus said, ‘The poor you have with you always.’ Well, that’s a truism in the sense it’s the common lot of mankind, but these poor result from the persecution in the time of Jacob’s trouble.

"If you don’t take ‘the mark of the beast’ what happens to you? You can’t buy, you can’t sell. You can’t own property; you can’t divest yourself of property.

“The kings are literally going to take the wealth from the people in the nations they control and make them poor. They’re going to use Israel and the Gentiles in those nations and suck the wealth out through corrupt money, corrupt government, corrupt policies.

"The wicked one’s going to oppress the poor; going to persecute the Believing Remnant and let them be taken in the devices they have imagined.

“Now, Psalm 10:3 explains why the Antichrist’s called the ‘foolish shepherd’: [3] For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth.

“It’s the greed that’s driving him; the will to be rich. If you go to Ezekiel 28, you’ll see that when Satan starts out, that prince of Tyre and king of Tyre is the man of sin and the son of perdition, and the whole object there is to get rich."

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