0:00
So the Antichrist, explain the Antichrist.
0:04
He's a man. Some people think he's the devil incarnate in the same way that Christ is God incarnate.
0:09
That's not the case. He is simply a man, but he is the instrument of the devil. He is somebody,
0:14
you know, if we understand that the moral struggle of life is to what extent we orient our life
0:19
toward God and to what extent we orient our life away from God and walk away from him and are
0:25
basically you want to put it this way, consorting with the demons who tempt us and to sin,
0:30
this is a man who is succumbed in every possible way to the will of the devil and completely,
0:37
you know, go even beyond what we call possession. Somebody who is his mind and heart is with Satan
0:43
in every possible respect. Okay. What is there are there any signs according to the dispensationalist
0:53
versus, you know, for give us kind of both if you can. Any signs that the Antichrist is coming,
1:00
like are there certain events that have to happen before the Antichrist shows up from the viewpoint
1:05
of the Orthodox and the viewpoint of the dispensationalists? Christ gave indications that some of us
1:11
could be considered general like, you know, wars and rumors of war earthquakes in various places,
1:16
you know, pestilences, this thing and things like that. I think what you would tend to find
1:22
from the traditional perspective is there are people they call Antichrist's plural with small A.
1:27
Then I say there are four runners or what we call types of Antichrist. People who are like,
1:32
like, like, like Nero or, you know, one of the big one was, was, uh,
1:38
Antichus, Antichus Epiphanes who persecuted the Jews in Jerusalem. He was the Greek ruler of Syria
1:45
back in Old Testament times who's written about in the book of Maccabees. There are these rulers
1:51
who are sort of four runners or a picture of what Antichrist will be like. And as the governance
1:57
of our world moves farther and farther away from God, then that is the preparation of the throne
2:03
of Antichrist. There's a concept in the scripture called the Catechon in Greek, the Restrainer,
2:08
when he that restrains is taken out of the way, then the last times will come. And of course in
2:14
Christianity, that is often identified in terms of godly rulers that is say back when we had
2:22
Christian kings who saw their job in part to have, you know, the righteousness of Christianity
2:30
as part of the state system as, you know, there are no Christian kings to speak of. You have a
2:35
few in Europe, but they're basically just, you know, republics and urban drag. I mean, they're not
2:39
significantly Christian monarchies anymore. Obviously, or Orthodox Christians, it would be,
2:44
have been associated with the East Roman Emperor or maybe with the Russian Emperor, the last one,
2:49
of course, was killed. I was Nicholas II. Some Catholics would identify with the Holy Roman Emperor.
2:54
In any case, the idea that there is the kingdom of God in civic affairs and in the form of
3:03
civil governments that take their moral cues from the Bible and from Christianity, that is
3:11
disappearing from our world. Rather, we're getting the whole rainbow spectrum and all the rest of it
3:16
as ungodliness, but being put into the place of godliness, that is a very definite sign of this
3:24
approach. But that could come on. That could last another 10,000 years. We really don't know.
3:29
One thing we don't do is you're not going to, let me put it this way. Many people will be fooled by
3:34
Antichrist, as I said. You're not going to recognize him because you've got the Bible in one hand,
3:39
you're watching the news and the other. You will recognize him because of your period of heart,
3:43
through prayer, fasting, doing good things, the things that bring you closer to Christ will allow you
3:49
to discern the Antichrist what he appears. As most people will be fooled. Yeah.
3:57
What is it that why do you think that dispensationalism has just taken such a strong hold? I mean,
4:03
it's fairly new. 2000 years without this and then suddenly we see it and it's really shaped
4:10
Christianity in a way that I would say is for the worse, but I don't know if I'm not a scholar of
4:22
history, so I don't know if there were other periods of time where religion was really,
4:27
there were the crusades and things. There were times where Christianity was used for violence.
4:31
But certainly right now, I see a lot of evangelicals,
4:38
excusing violence and the murder of children and the stealing of land and the,
4:45
what I would think is extremely non-Christ-like and they're embracing it.
4:52
It's hard to reconcile how they reconcile it in their minds.
5:00
I think it's a manifestation of the progression I just described earlier. If you understand
5:06
the direction of history, the mystery and equity is kind of the progressive withdrawal
5:11
of grace from the world and from even from those who call themselves Christians as they get farther
5:16
and farther away historically from authentic Christianity. At least as Orthodox, we would say
5:22
that really kicked in the high gear with the great schism, with the split with Roman Catholicism,
5:26
a thousand years ago, that even more so with the Reformation, you get to the point where people
5:32
are so divorced from the authentic Christian apostolic teaching and from the life in Christ
5:40
in the sacraments of the church where everything is just me and my Bible and whatever I think is
5:44
right and whatever that guy over there, hey, whatever Reverend Billy Bob says is just as good
5:48
as what the church fathers say and in fact I never heard of the church fathers that what you have
5:53
people who are so ignorant and so lacking in the grace that is found in the church, they simply
6:02
have no mental or moral or spiritual moorings. They're being set up to be deceived and to deceive
6:08
themselves. When you talk to dispensationalists, to evangelicals and you tell them your traditional
6:18
Orthodox viewpoint, what kind of pushback do they give you? You know, I don't, well, first off,
6:27
there I go to is full of people who were that, so they're not that anymore, so you know, sometimes
6:31
they don't push back. I mean, I teach by class, you know, I've got, you know, usually 20 people at a
6:35
time and most of them come from some kind of Protestant background, some from Roman Catholic background,
6:40
so more and more people are not pushing back. They realize they've been led into a dead end.
6:45
There are others who simply, I'm treated to experience this, not just in this context, but also where
6:51
people who know what they know very well even if it happens not to be true. They're simply stuck in
6:56
an idea they can get out of their head. That's where I am, that's where I live. I know this is, I mean,
7:02
you've talked to this and to people about this with regard to any number of things. We'll start
7:06
in with, you know, support for Israel as a, as a defined mandate. I mean, you saw that, that tweet
7:12
from Ted Cruz yesterday. I think it was where he basically says anybody who doesn't accept the,
7:17
this, this, this Christian Zionist is essentially a bad American as well as a bad Christian. How,
7:23
I don't, I, I don't think you can talk to people like that. I think some people when they have an
7:28
e-day fix in their mind that is simply not going to, they're not necessarily hostile. They just
7:33
sort of dismiss what you have to say because it doesn't fit into their, their, their, their, their,
7:37
it's, I guess it's cognitive dissonance in a sense.
7:41
And so they really believe that they can bring about the return of Jesus. That's what they're
7:45
aiming for. That's what they're trying to do. Yes, yes. Yeah. And by through their actions,
7:51
that's why you have Christian Zionist helping with this. What is the temple mount organization
7:56
with the bread heifer and all that kind of stuff? Because they think through their actions,
7:59
they can help make it happen. It's almost like, you know, communist saying we can, we can bring
8:05
about communism through the class conflict, class conflict or something like that. They can,
8:09
they can become the midwife of history and make things happen by themselves.
8:15
And so they think that Jesus will come back and sing them pray, like will, uh,
8:20
will, I guess, congratulate them or tell them that they were good soldiers after they've killed a
8:27
bunch of kids. Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, first they have to get raptured. We remember,
8:32
they have to get raptured before they make something. They're going to get raptured if they're killing
8:36
kids. I mean, that, but okay. So what is the rapture? Remember, too, they believe, I'll believe
8:42
an instant salvation. I mean, again, this is something utterly untraditional in Christianity.
8:48
The idea that you just say the sinner's prayer, Jesus, I'm sorry. I'm a sinner. I know you died
8:52
for my sins. I, you know, I believe in you and beam. I'm eternally eternal security. So no
8:59
matter what I do after that, I cannot lose my salvation. So that's, that's, that's, that's,
9:05
that's, and that's very prevalent in the evangelism, even apart from dispensationalism.
9:12
I'm sorry, I interrupted your question. What was it?
9:15
No, I mean, well, I, that, um, just the, well, go ahead. I forgot my question.
9:25
No, I forgot my answer. Okay. Well, then let's just move on.
9:31
Okay. So I get, you know, I, I think a good question. I think the big question that many of us
9:38
that are kind of watching this on the sidelines and seeing these Evangelicals cheer on wars.
9:43
I mean, that's what they're doing. They're cheering on wars, cheering on genocides. And they're
9:46
saying like anything is real once anything because Jesus is going to come back and I'm going to
9:51
be saved, I guess. I mean, I don't know what the thinking is there. But I guess any of us sitting
9:56
on the sidelines are wondering, how do we break free of this? Like how do we stop them from
10:02
believing this? And that's the thing that's really challenging because it's a belief. Yeah.
10:06
This isn't like something you can rationalize with people. It's, when it's a belief, it's
10:11
extra dangerous. And that is why I think, you know, it's, it's interesting that a lot of Christians
10:16
will point out at the Islamic world and say, well, you know, they're so dangerous because of
10:20
their religious views and we can't change their religious views. And it's like, well, look
10:24
in the mirror. I mean, you're doing the same thing. You're just, you just think your religion is
10:29
right and not theirs. And so that's why you're getting away with, you know, you think you can get
10:33
away with the same sort of atrocities. And so, but that's been the challenge in the Islamic world.
10:39
It's a challenge in the evangelical world, which is, how do we get these minds to shift so that
10:47
they stop committing these atrocities in the name of God? Yeah. Well, we can talk about Islam too,
10:54
because I think that sometimes there's a mental trap that people fall into and say, well,
10:58
X is bad. Therefore, why must be good? You know, Hitler was bad. Stalin must be good. No,
11:02
Stalin was bad. No, no, Hitler must be good. I mean, I don't think that dichotomy worked. And I
11:07
think there's a lot about people, that a lot of times when people are critical of Israel, or
11:13
sometimes the, you know, the influence of big Jewish money and running our country with their
11:17
Zionist, Christian foot soldiers into the voting booth and say, you know, that, okay, that's
11:25
all bad. But that means, must mean that, you know, all the Muslims search us warm and cuddly
11:29
teddy bears and they're not. I mean, again, looking at the history of Islam for 1400 years,
11:34
it has not been a pretty picture. So we, we can discuss that too. But in terms of what we can do
11:39
about it, short answer is, I don't think we probably can. They're not a lot of people will never
11:45
change their minds. And this is where we get to another form of corruption that exists in our
11:49
country. We like to live, believe we live in a constitutional republic. We live in a democracy
11:54
where the opinions and values and interests of the people matter. You know, newsflash, they don't
12:03
that people run this country. The, you know, the Epstein class have their own agendas.
12:08
It's not just one agenda. It's several agendas that maybe dovetail in a certain way. And that
12:13
is the establishment that runs our country. That's the oligarchy that runs our country. Yeah,
12:18
we, hey, look, I voted for the peace president. Look what it got made, right? You know, no matter
12:23
who you vote for, you're going to get John McCain. And that's the way it is in our country today.
12:29
And I think a lot of people just so we don't want to admit that, well, if we can just convince
12:32
people, we can just, you know, you know, yeah, we'll get on, you know, podcasts and convince a lot of
12:37
people. And then, yeah, even if you convince the majority of the population that we're going down
12:42
the wrong track, I don't think it's going to change anything at least not in terms until it
12:48
brings us to some sort of a crack up. And I don't know what that crack up looks, but I think we're
12:52
getting close to it. Thanks for watching this clip from the full Kim I recent show, which you can
12:56
catch Monday through Friday, 2 p.m. Pacific 5 p.m. Eastern for free at Kim I recent show dot com.