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APPENDIX  2

{from SMR pp.  750Bff., adapted}

There is no uncertainty about what is to come. Someone is to be the DEMONIC 'HEAD' - the devil's messiah. The devil, not being near the infinite wisdom of God, often copies. The Lord has His Messiah, His anointed Son, His eternal word make into man to deliver man by death and resurrection, smashing that enemy death with a life which could not be quashed. Hence the devil is keen on one of his own, and this one is all that you could wish from the subtle enemy of man.

Already the path is being prepared in the combination of FEAR leading to loss of liberty, with GREED leading to power to control, and SUBTLETY leading to power of man, to ensure that somewhere someone survives; and especially the top number one, like Mao, like Hitler, like Stalin. But you say, THEY did not survive. Of course not, only God in the end, remains. But that is the lie! It asks ALL and gives in the end, less than NOTHING.

The desire for 'something greater' (p. 958 infra), yet without God has long been pathological: it is now pandemic. It multiplies, growing and showing in sects, politics, philosophy, sociology, biology, physics; while spiritual pollution at nearly every level shows no sign of levelling off. (Cf. pp. 251-252G, 315Aff., Ch 4, 578-581, 685-689, 693-732B supra, 836ff., 922, 955-958, 972, 999-1002A, 1010, 1076 infra, 1088G-H.)

Synthesis
It is indeed becoming a monster which is at the last to show its demonic head, in the devil's 'messiah', the "man of sin" (II Thessalonians 2:8), long in preparation. (Cf. pp. 506, 515, 696-697, 721-725 supra, 732B-C, 955-959, 963, 972 infra.)

  Over the history of ideas, ideologies, associations and quasi-churches, that final 'head' will have much from which to synthesise, select, develop for its fateful days of expressive evil. Chemist, chameleon and deceiver, his lineage is long. The 'father of lies' (John 8:44, 14:29-30) is his background, the beast his foreground. (Cf. pp. 422N, 481, 686, 696, 723, 743-744 supra; 886-887, 1031C infra - and refer Satan.)

Streams
There is, moreover, a river of events, prepared for its pathway, both over time and with growing force over more recent years, and it has many converging tributaries. The Hitlers and the Stalins have failed; but their eyes were on the world with weird hallucinatory philosophies, gurgling together with obtrusive or unobtrusive, but always real 'religion'. They have not failed to encourage the thought, long latent in mankind and often displayed:
 

something greater without God, something human without limits, something international with glory.

Other modes of this evil, this delusive stream - filled with the pathogens of unbelief - have earlier left their legacy in favour of spiritual supinity within the race. Today, we see a gushing with many memories and vast breadth, of this stream, like some expansive gulf, into the sea of destiny. There its man, its messenger, its delusive 'head' awaits in his time, the cue to 'arise' (II Thessalonians 2:7-9). People are intent on glory, but not on God, so a fake is their coming inheritance, but not for long; for as he arises into supremacy, his idiocy is all too clear, and a certain burning of his brilliance is the last rite before his doom (cf.  Revelation 19-20).

The Thrills of Contemporary Rills
Consider some of the contemporary tributaries of this stream that pours to the final flow.

As to NATO ? This lacks some cohesion, has some awkwardness with growing European glory and dimming American power mixed, lacks something of identity and is already finding another body, the Western European Union (q.v.), as the defence arm - of an ignited and increasingly excited Europe. This in turn is being absorbed as the mlitance of Europe increases, yet still latent. Even if it be only oil burning as pollutant on the waters, it is showy. NATO was more practical following World War II; Europe has the glamour of past and the progressive self-intoxication that brewed in the minds of many a dictator.

But what of the UN ? (cf. pp. 749ff. supra). It has panache and puts into propositions its barren and intrusive  'laws' as Declarations, for many. Often it speaks like a modern Moses, but meretricious - and ex-God: an omission... of some infinite significance. As if God, it speaks without God, as if taking a loan on the presidential praesidium.

The International Labour Organisation, ILO also shows development: it has a past rather than a future, more passion than morality, more Marx than marketability. The World Council of Churches - W.C.C. (q.v.) ? THERE is presumption, enough for any dictator, but it is parasitic on Christianity: with little power, and with no glamour or glory. It should of course be of considerable help to the devil's chaplain (Revelation 13:11-12, see infra), that pretender that dabbles in religion, but not without power and cunning.

'Community' ? (q.v., cf. pp. 1191-1192 infra): this is another phase of the unification of mankind into manipulable masses without God.

What of this artefact of social engineering and verbal creationism, the making of 'man' by talk ? THIS, rather than 'people' (as in 'people power') or 'proletariat' (a befouled symbol of betrayal) is a code word for would-be dictators. It has the same principle as in the Communism of Marx, where the concept is a delusive substitute for tyranny by oligarchy, appropriately propelled by a ... 'Secretary'.

The papacy ? Its glory is done, as it wobbles downhill to revelation of the falsity of its ... specialised revelation, in an explosive, itching, twitching, new-thing seeking world. (See SMR Ch. 9, pp. 946ff., Ch. 10 infra: pp. 1032-1088H.) As seen in these pages, the scarlet harlot sitting on the beast, the throne of power in this earth, using the political process for her own ends, is cast down by those same powers at the end, and endures fire (Revelation 17-18). Nevertheless, as with the WCC, its organisational structure could make a readily manipulable part of the final pattern for the man of sin, with his eclectic, syncretistic pretension in religion.

Psychic Alcohol
All of these, with their coming admixture, synthesis, adaptations, and many more referred to in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, are looseners of mankind's fibre, integrity of virtue, independence, pollutants of the race's discriminating, critical faculty. Man once used, becomes much over-used and abused by the final manipulation program towards which so many of the unity religious movements movement with their deadly dynamism (cf. News 121, 122). Their increasingly popular IDEA of subordinating man to man, or to man's idea, or to man's empty but clamant claims... to losing oneself, one's group or one's nation in 'mankind' or in an international base supposedly representative of it, one of (hoped for) power, importance and (de facto) presumption: THIS IDEA it is which is here significant for the future, together WITH its spiritual bases!).

No mere idea, it has a passion like a psychic alcohol to the godless; and it drugs many idealists into its empty vision. The feelings (on the one hand) and the facts (on the other) of LSD experiences ... are an excellent symbol of its mode of operation. Of value, it suggests much: but it secures... nothing.

The Swamp
Indeed, they become, such things, like a swamp from the endless seeming insurgencies, which are a preparation...

The demonic 'head' to come of it, then, and his aid, in this spiritual swamp ? (Revelation 13:1, Daniel 7:8, II Thessalonians 2:8). What of them ?

 Revelation 13:4-5,11,13-16, with II Thessalonians 2, Daniel 7:8,25 exposes both the devil's chaplain and his 'messiah' vigorously stirring the pathogens, enriching the mixture. Meanwhile, Revelation 12 is depicting for us,  Israel as a whole (12:1) with her famed 12 tribes, from which (Romans 9:5) came the Lord's Christ (Luke 3:26). This people has suffered and was to suffer during the whole church age (cf. Revelation 11:2, 12:6), and in this, our more recent era - a "time of Jacob's trouble" (Jeremiah 30:7) - exceedingly! It was to do it ? It has done it. God's word always applies, irresistible, history conforming like soldiers on parade.

As to the devil, ousted from heaven (Revelation 12:9), this proud spirit is overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of the testimony of the brethren of Christ (Revelation 12:11), who do not "love their lives to the death". The wrath of the devil, exposed and degraded, is fierce on earth (Revelation 12:12). That fallen being is at war with the spiritual "offspring" of the woman: that is, those who obey God's commands in Christ (Revelation 12:17, cf. Luke 3:8). That is, Biblically, the "Israel of God" of the now-installed New Covenant (Galatians 6:15-16, Romans 2:28).

All the battalions of belief will be in one program, one Gospel, one God, one Jesus Christ, one Lord and only Saviour (cf. Revelation 7, 14, myriads uncountable). The dénouement is brief (II Thessalonians 2:8); but the preparations which we survey: they have been long. (Cf. pp. 422J,M-O, 451-453, 744 supra, 857ff., 999 infra.) His end is unenviable; but the that is the nature of lie, of untruth, of self-surging self-assurance, despicable before God, the only Creator and Saviour.

The Stage
Let us change the figure. Such preliminaries set a stage, aided by New Age 'consciousness' (pp. 867 ff. infra) and fragmented Messianic hopes, with the spotlight of fear lighting it up, lest the race fail to survive ... in its angers, its passions, its godless deeds and its 'quasi-needs' that aspire to predominate, with its frustrations and its bombs.

It awaits the antichrist "man-of-sin" of II Thessalonians 2. It is like an audience awaits the rising of a curtain, for the agents of action, and for the lead rôle. (Cf. pp. 422L, 451-453 supra, and The Thrills of Contemporary Rills, earlier in this entry.) An anticlimax however is this anti-christ. Summarising the evil of many generations, and currently in his preparations, prophetically right on course for his appearance in the correct and predicted milieu precisely (cf.
pp. 683 ff.; Ch. 9): he is scheduled to meet the authentic Christ - His advent as Saviour long past; and this he does in the epoch of Christ's coming return to judgment.

Once the display, and the teaching, and the grand permission to history for so long, for the illustrative freedoms to instruct the human race, and to give it place: once these are past over many centuries, the end is short. II Thessalonians 2 is pithy. (Cf. Revelation 19:11-20.)

The role of 'man of sin' is illustrious in the flesh, combustible in spirit, a nest of confusion, a place for burning, without accolade, for the exploitation of spiritual power and beauty, turning it into degraded dregs and dashed dynamism lying in deserved ruin.