Mystery Babylon and the Stone Kingdom, part 73—Are biblical prophecies to be our guide to action?
If you have been listening to these lectures, or reading these blogs from the beginning of the series, then by now you should have a fairly good comprehension of the two biblical entities known as Mystery, Babylon the Great and the Stone Kingdom.
It is an unavoidable fact that if you are just tuning in, you will not have the background of the previous chapters/lectures to understand some of what we are teaching in these later lectures in the series.
Like many of my Bible study lecture series, this is like a full-year college course, and if you start attending the classes midway through the spring semester, then you have a whole lot of catching up to do.
I say that so that you understand that in each successive lecture, we simply cannot spend much time reviewing. But you can easily read all the preceding blogs. Or if you want to obtain the audio version of these lectures, the whole series is available from us in convenient CD albums of four or five lectures per album.
https://stonekingdom.org/order-forms
And now, online, you can listen to individual lectures or obtain the whole series of 69 lectures in mp3 format on a thumb drive.
For the regular listeners/readers, you also understand that we live in an era in the history of the world where Mystery Babylon appears to be at its zenith of power and control over nearly all the nations of the globe. Yet, it is at this very time that Mystery Babylon comes in judgment before God. (Note: This lecture was originally presented in March 2012. I have added more comments for this 2020 publication.)
As a result of God’s judgment, Mystery Babylon will crumble and fall onto the ash heap of history while simultaneously God’s Stone Kingdom rises to its full potential. That potential will be fully realized in the millennial kingdom.
My study convinces me, however, that the glory and perfection of that utopian world government in the millennium will not occur overnight, but it will happen over a period of time, probably measured in many years, or perhaps over many decades.
If our understanding is accurate concerning where we are in God’s Plan and His timetable, then Christian believers ought to be very concerned about what we should be doing while we are witnessing the slow motion fall of Mystery Babylon the Great. Should we be “coming out of Babylon” now?
Even if we were not believers, it would still be of great importance to us because when a world-ruling empire collapses, everyone is affected. It stands to reason that when a system of political, economic, religious and social order falls apart, we are left with chaos. When chaos reigns, everyone gets hurt. The chaos is bad enough, but it usually does not last very long.
That is because, historically, chaos soon leads to authoritarian rule of one sort or another. Totalitarianism by any other name smells just as horrible. So whether it is a one man dictatorship, such as King Nebuchadnezzar of ancient Babylon, or an oligarchy, authoritarianism bodes very badly for the average person who is trying to survive under such conditions.
That, in a nutshell, is why these particular recent lectures are so vital for Christian believers. We see chaos approaching. We understand that it signifies the collapse of the entity that the Bible calls Mystery Babylon. As we near the close of 2020, it is becoming obvious to many that the chaos is here. It may yet get worse.
I believe now even more than I did in 2012 that we are seeing the collapse of Mystery Babylon. Biblically speaking, the Mystery Babylonians are “wailing and gnashing their teeth.” They are “kicking and screaming” as their system of global control is collapsing. They realize it spells their doom.
They are “kicking” via false flag events. They are kicking as we witness—and some of us experience—our Leftist politicians (blue state governors and blue city mayors) trying to impose greater and greater restrictions upon our liberties. “Wear your mask!” “Keep your social(-ist) distancing!” “No more than six (or ten) persons allowed in your home for Thanksgiving dinner.” “And keep your masks on inside your home except when you are eating!”
Their “kicking” is accompanied by their “screaming” via their partners in the Lying Legacy Media: “Joe Biden is the President-elect!” Note: the news media have no right to declare a winner. Don’t believe their lies!
“COVID-19 cases are rising!” they scream, while they seldom report the number of deaths (from the Coronavirus, not with the CV, not from underlying co-morbidities), and they ignore the fact that the chances of dying from the CV are now almost zilch; 99.98xxx percent chances across all age groups.
We do not desire to see chaos and a totalitarian system of death and destruction descend upon the earth, so as believers should do, we look to God’s Word for answers. Does the Bible have any instructions for God’s people during this critical era in history?
We confidently assert that God has given many instructions for His people for this time. We further assert that those instructions are in the form of prophecies. God’s Spirit moved upon the prophets of old to record certain prophecies for this era. We can read them in our day and know what to do.
This was not possible until our era because good men throughout the centuries have read the prophecies also, but they struggled and puzzled over them and ultimately could not comprehend them.
I am speaking specifically here about prophecies in the books of Daniel and Revelation. We have spent much time in this series studying in the book of Daniel. At the very end of the book, the angel says this to Daniel.
Daniel 12:9 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
Consequently, there was no possible way in centuries past for anyone to understand many of these prophecies, for God said they would be sealed until the appointed time.
Even so, as we are confident that we are now understanding many of the passages previously obscure to believers, we claim neither infallibility, nor even a very accurate foresight in terms of detailed specifics of what is going to happen. We only see the broad outlines, but here is how and what we do see very clearly:
You see, I often find myself coming back time and time again to the brief statement by Peter on the day of Pentecost. You might recall in Acts, chapter 2, beginning in verse 15, as Peter observes all that is happening in Jerusalem as numerous manifestations of the Holy Spirit are occurring and bystanders think that those experiencing the Holy Spirit are drunken, but Peter says:
Acts 2:15 For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. [9 o’clock in the morning]
16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;
And then Peter goes on to quote a passage from Joel which in hindsight Peter can now see that the day’s events are a fulfillment (at least in part) of that prophecy in Joel. And that is my point. I use the phrase “this is that....” as shorthand for this idea that it is almost always in hindsight that most of us can see that “oh...this is that...!”
Many of us have been learning God’s “sign language,” as it were. But even while we are seeing many wonderful examples—both personally, nationally and globally—of God’s Plan in operation by understanding His sign language, I know of no one who has a crystal ball and accurately sees the future in all things.
I am not saying there are no true prophets today. Of course, there are. But they see only a glimpse, here and there, and most of the time, they themselves cannot see exactly how their word from the Lord is going to manifest and play out.
In my own personal case, I do not make predictions and say “thus saith the Lord,” and yet it is obvious from hindsight that Stone Kingdom Ministries has been following certain prophetic patterns.
I can assure you that I had no prior conscious knowledge, and usually I only understand it from a prophetic sense when someone else—like my dear brother in the Lord, Ron Oja—points it out to me later. Okay, got a little bit off the track of the lecture there—but yet it was not off track.
Because I was explaining that our instructions as believers are prewritten for us as prophecy—in the books of Daniel and Revelation, and in the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and in Ezekiel and Joel, and in Zechariah and Obadiah and so forth.
We began to learn in the last chapter some of the answers to the question, which was the title of that chapter/lecture, As Babylon Falls, What Do We Do? This chapter/lecture is called: Come Out of Her, My People.
Of course, there are always critics and skeptics who scorn at the idea of obtaining a course of action from the Bible. They would assert that reading a prophecy in the Bible and then going out and trying to make it happen is ... what? ...a self-fulfilling prophecy or something like that?
It is not exactly self-fulfilling because we did not make the prediction; God did. But in any case, is there something wrong with that? I mean, think about it. We find ourselves nationally in a dire situation and it’s getting worse. So we can either do something or we can do nothing. And if we do something, then what should we do?
Well, then someone like myself comes along and says, “Hey, gang; look here. God wrote about all this in the Bible. And here is how He predicted it was going to end. But even better, is that He also gave some pretty clear—if not detailed—instructions on what His followers would do right at this juncture in history. What do you say we try to do what God says His people are going to do?”
Now if believers follow up on that course of action, there are several possibilities:
- The Bible and all of Christianity is a hoax. If that is the case, then there will be no divine intervention or assistance as we go about trying to do what appears to be directed by the Bible. And we may or may not be successful since we are entirely on our own.
Obviously, as seasoned Christians, most of us have come to the point where faith is unnecessary because we know. And before someone erroneously quotes me as saying faith is unnecessary, let me qualify that statement. I am restricting that statement to the claim by some that the Bible and Christianity are an elaborate hoax. Seasoned Christians know it is not.
- A second possibility: God does exist; and He inspired the Bible. And it is all true, but as we go about trying to follow His instructions, we might misunderstand the timing. That is certainly a possibility, in which case, our role on the stage was not exactly what we thought it was.
Let me present an example of that. Remember how cult leader David Koresh and his Branch Davidians were incinerated at Waco, Texas back in 1993?
First, David Koresh was his stage name, so to speak. And he was on the world stage for that 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian headquarters in Waco, Texas.
His real name was Vernon Howell, but he changed it to David because he saw himself as a conqueror like David. He also saw himself as a modern-day Cyrus who would overthrow the present Mystery Babylonian system. You see, the name Koresh means Cyrus.
Obviously, events did not turn out exactly the way he thought they would. But as the truth about that siege comes out through the national media, as Ron has suggested it will at some point, it might just come to pass that David Koresh will indeed be instrumental, albeit, posthumously, in helping to bring down modern Babylon.
If that happens, we can say that, bottom line: Vernon Howell was blinded to exactly what his role was to be in the bring-down of Babylon. But Who blinded him to that aspect of his role? God did, of course, otherwise Koresh would not have played his role the way that God had scripted it for him.
I am not criticizing David Koresh for his blindness, because I have already shared with you my own continual blindness to what I am doing in some aspects of my work at Stone Kingdom Ministries. I myself am blind about many details of my own role, until my eyes are opened after the fact. “This is that!”
So to repeat; the second possibility is that we might misunderstand the timing of when Babylon is supposed to come down. From Koresh’s perspective, he certainly misunderstood the timing; but yet, from the heavenly Father’s perspective, Koresh played his role perfectly.
We can see by his example the tragic consequences of misunderstanding God’s timing. Of course, Mr. Howell also had many other misunderstandings of prophecy, which it is not necessary for us to delineate as that is not germane to our study at this juncture. I shall pick up with the third possibility in the next installment.
(To be continued.)
