No peace from 'Prince'

Prince, Prince, Prince, Prince, Prince. You can’t get away from that sound, that word, that name! Imagine all the babies and toddlers who are unwittingly having that word burned into their psyche and permanently hard-wired in their brain.

From the Bible, we know Satan is “the prince of this world”; “the prince of the power of the air.” Ezekiel 28:2 says, 'Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God.'

“He takes Jesus out into a mountain, shows him all of the kingdoms of the world and says, ‘All of these are mine and to whomsoever I give them,’ ” reminds Jordan. “He delegated his authority to the King of Tyrus and it was in his stead that the King of Tyrus operated. He is really the power behind the throne. That compares exactly with Revelation 13. The beast gives the power and authority to the Antichrist.”

“I’ve said for many years that if Jesus Christ stood right here today and the Antichrist stood right next to Him, the average Christian couldn’t decide which is which and wouldn’t be able to identify the right one. And if they were forced to pick, they’d pick the wrong one! Satan is such a deceiver."

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Here is an old post on all-things Antichrist:

“The Antichrist will be an Assyrian Jew reigning with ten kings of the earth who bow to his persuasiveness,” explains Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org). “They’ll come and join willingly, not because he holds a dictatorial hand over them and says, ‘If you don’t take my mark and do what I say I won’t let you eat.’

“They’ll come because they drank of the wine of fornication of his apostasy. He’s made the kings of the earth drunk with this wine and they come deluded into doing it; not because they’re forced, but because they’re deceived!

“The Antichrist is going to be a counterfeit religious ruler who works miracles in the earth. Through the religious persuasion of the ‘false prophet’ he gathers authority. So there is a religious element to it and it’s called ‘mystery Babylon the great, the mother of harlots.’

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“God literally sends a ‘strong delusion’ to the unbelievers left behind at the Rapture. They want a lie so God says, “Okay, I’ll send you a lie. In fact, I’ll send you THE liar and THE ultimate lie.”

“In order to get Israel to buy into that they have to depart so fully from the truth to the lie program. Israel will depart so completely that the lie seems like the truth.

“I mean, you imagine II Thessalonians 2:4: ‘Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.’

“Here’s how he does that. He’s going to substitute the truth of the Creator for the creature as being God. Where’s the temple of God? It’s in Jerusalem.

“By the way, that’s a great verse to tell you the Antichrist isn’t going to come from the Vatican. He’s the profaned prince, as Ezekiel calls him, and he takes over in Jerusalem. But imagine having this character go in and sit in the temple!

“Remember, God had a throne in the temple where He sat. It was between the cherubim on the mercy seat over the Ark of the Covenant. This guy’s going to go into the throne room of the temple and sit there and say, ‘I’m the Creator.’

“Israel’s going to be so spiritually blinded, departed from the faith so thoroughly, that that’s all going to make sense to them. That’s how thoroughly deceptive this character’s going to be.

“The fundamental way he’ll do that is by demonstrating himself to be God by transitioning from the man of sin to the son of perdition by way of that resurrection.

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"That expression Paul uses in II Thessalonians 2:3, ‘that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition,’ is a two-stage revelation of the Antichrist. Those are two very important titles. In fact, the third one is in verse 8 where he’s called ‘that Wicked,’ and you see that’s got a capital ‘W’ because it’s a proper name. That’s one of the names of the Antichrist.

“There are a couple of dozen specific names given to the Antichrist in Scripture. These are three of the most powerful ones because they describe him. Psalm 10 ends by identifying ‘that wicked one, that man of the earth.’

“Psalm 10 is a whole psalm about the rise and career of the Antichrist and the believing remnant in the last days and their relationship and dependence on the Lord in facing the Antichrist.

“It’s a psalm about him oppressing the poor and the poor here are those people who can’t buy or sell, specifically because they didn’t take ‘the mark of the beast’ from Revelation.

“They’re the poor in Matthew 25 when it says, ‘I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was naked and you gave me clothes.’ The reason for those things has to do with the persecution and oppression the Antichrist will be putting on some people in that specific period of time in the last days.

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In the midst of the 70^th week of Daniel, he transitions from being that man of sin who is the personification of human natural rebellion and wickedness (the sin of man) into becoming the son of Satan. That is, the personification of the satanic program and the personification of the working of Satan.

“That’s the reason Paul says in II Thessalonians 2: 9, ‘Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.’

“Time wise, this takes place in what Daniel calls ‘the midst of the week.’ You have to be careful when you’re talking about a term like ‘the midst of the week’ and ‘the middle of the week.’ We often talk about the middle of the 70^th week of Daniel because there are 42 months in the first half and 42 months in the last half. 1,260 days in one and 1,260 days in the other. The midpoint is the 1,261^st day.

“But if I say ‘in the midst’ of something, that doesn’t bring it down to just one day or even two days. The midst can be a middle part. If you have seven years of the 70^th week of Daniel, and I said the midst of it, well, really the midst of it could be the fourth year. You’d have three before and three afterward and you’d have a middle year.

“The term ‘midst’ isn’t going to expand out to be a whole year but it’s going to be a period of several weeks—really probably about a month’s worth of time.

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“Revelation 11:7-8 says, ‘And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.’

“Notice that Jerusalem has become spiritually equivalent to Sodom and Egypt. That is NOT a compliment.

“Spiritually they’ve become, as Revelation 18 says, ‘The hold of every fowl and unclean birds (spirits).’ This is the center where the Antichrist is going to come and set up his throne.

“What I want you to see is who it is that leads in the killing of these two witnesses? Well, it’s the beast, but he’s described in an interesting way: ‘That ascends out of the bottomless pit.’

“Now, the dudes in the bottomless pit are, well, they’re not humans. And yet here, when he looks at the Antichrist, he’s been transformed into something that is beyond just a human experience.

“In chapter 17, he’s identified as ‘the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit.’ There gets to be some rather extraordinary, if I try to be polite about it, activities involved in the career of this guy.

“How is it that he, in the middle of his life, becomes the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit? If you come over to Revelation 13, you’ll see this character, because John’s going to amplify on who this beast is that you read about in chapter 11 and 12.

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“Revelation 13:1 says, ‘And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.’

“In chapter six, when he shows up, he’s only got ONE crown and now he’s got 10 of them. By this time in his career he’s gone out and taken over the ten kings that were there and he’s now sitting as the ruler of the government in that region.

“The chapter goes on, ‘[2] And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. [3] And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.’

“Now, if you’re mortally wounded and then that wound is healed . . . if you come down to verse 11 says, ‘And I beheld another beast (this one will be called the false prophet in chapter 19) coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.’

“So this beast, this false prophet, is going to come along, and through the doctrine he promotes, is going to cause the world to worship. Now, who do you worship? Don’t you worship God? The false prophet is going to preach a message that causes people to worship the first beast—the Antichrist.

“Verse 12 says, ‘And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.’

“Notice the basis for the worship of that first beast is this deadly wound gets healed. The basis isn’t that he was wounded; it’s that he got over the deadly wound!

“Verse 13 says, ‘And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.’

“Notice this guy is a miracle worker. Nobody’s going to look at the miracles and say they were charlatans. He’s literally going to be able to . . . we read the verse in II Thessalonians about signs and lying wonders. They’re wonders designed to deceive. So he deceives them that dwell in the earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do.

“The next verse says, ‘And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.’

“Here’s a guy, he’s the man of sin. He gets into a situation where he is assassinated with a sword and then . . . now remember he’s the ANTIchrist. Jesus Christ dies but in His career He doesn’t just die; He’s raised again.

“This guy’s going to duplicate the career of the Lord Jesus Christ. He’ll die and he’ll prove himself to be the son of perdition with power by resurrection from the dead.

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“Isaiah 37: 5-7 says, ‘So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.
[6] And Isaiah said unto them, Thus shall ye say unto your master, Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
[7] Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.’

“One of the heads of those seven heads back there is Assyria. The Antichrist is often identified, especially in Isaiah and Micah, as the Assyrian. The events are really a prologue for the events in the future.

“But notice what he says about him in Isaiah 37. Here’s the king who’s come against Jerusalem, against Hezekiah, and he’s going to fall by the sword in his own land. But now look back at chapter 14, where we’re going to talk about this dude again.

“Isaiah 14:24 says, 24] The LORD of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand:
[25] That I will break the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains tread him under foot: then shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart from off their shoulders.

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“The beast is described in terms of grotesqueness. When Scripture refers to the ‘brute beast,’ it’s talking about the the violence, the ferocity, the cruel, heartless slayer.

“Isaiah 11:4 says, [4] But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.

“When the Lord Jesus Christ comes to reign, He’s going to reign in real justice, not impacted by media concerns, social concerns, political concerns. That’s why II Thessalonians 2:8 talks about the Wicked ‘who he will consume with the spirit of his mouth.’ ”