LAST DAYS -- THE 20th CENTURY
The time of the coming of the Messiah is called the Last Days. It doesn't mean the last days of the earth, but the last days of evil. Mankind is basically good, but has inherited sin and ignorance of the spirit world, so mankind is influenced both by Satan and God.
Communism is Satan's greatest instrument of terror. But Satan works in many ways. He works to destroy the family unit. Thousands of children are murdered by their parents each year in America. 40,000 children die each day around the world from hunger and poor water. The statistics for broken homes, suicide, drug abuse and many other tactics of Satan are frightening. There is more suffering in the last days than at any time. It is an intense time of turmoil and confusion. The following are some aspects of the Last Days.
1. Jesus warned before he died that at the time of the second coming that " ... many will come in my name, saying 'I am the Christ ...'" (Matt. 24: 3-5). One indication of telling when the Third Adam would be born is that there will be a number of men saying they are the savior of the world: "' ... what will be the sign of your coming and the closing of the age?' and Jesus answered them, 'take heed that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying 'I am the Christ ...' (Matt. 24:3-5).
The last days will be a time of much spiritual phenomena and awakening. There will be spiritual longing as well as a decline in conventional religion. The 20th century is that time predicted in Acts 2:17 where it says, "... in the last days ... I will pour my spirit upon all flesh ... This explains why there is so much spiritual phenomena today. Satan sometimes twists this phenomena and leads people into insanity, crime, suicide and following possessed, evil people like Hitler or Jim Jones.
Jesus said: "And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive the many" (Matt. 24:11). We see a multitude of gurus in the 20th century who claim to have the truth. These men who receive the revelation saying YOU are the lord are not aware that they are hearing not that they are the Lord of the Second Advent, but they along with everyone are to be lords of creation when they reach perfection. These men are partially spiritually open but because they have not reached perfection their communication and understanding of God is limited. These people communicate at different levels of spirit world according to their different spiritual development , intellect, environment, etc.
The Lord of the Second Advent will have total understanding of God's heart and will. He will lead a true life and be able to answer the fundamental questions of life. The center of God's providence is Judeo-Christianity, and he must come on that foundation.
Christianity is divided in hundreds of different denominations -- some of which are even at war with each other such as in Ireland between the Catholics and Protestants. Because men have interpreted the bible differently, the Messiah comes to clarify the Bible through revelations from God so that Christianity can be united into a higher dimension. God is beyond denominationalism. The Messiah will teach Christianity to transcend its differences and ascend to a higher level. The Messiah must first bring unity to world Christianity. When those men who feel they are the Messiah become really humble they will then realize they do not have these qualifications and will direct their followers to the true Messiah and will himself follow the Messiah. Until they do they are minor false Christs who cannot lead their followers or anyone else into the ideal world just as the main false Christ of Communism cannot.
2. The last days will be a time of secular selfishness, pleasure seeking and rebellion: YOU must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God (II Tim. 3:1-4). Are most people lovers of pleasure more than lovers of god? The world is filled with immorality and selfishness. At the end of the twentieth century billions of people watch TV which glorifies pre-marital sex.
3. "And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars" (Matt. 24:6). The wars of the 20th century have been more widespread, devastating and frequent than any time in history.
4. There will be a naivete to evil by many who will advocate peace, without understanding that we cannot negotiate and co-exist with evil. For when they shall say, 'peace and safety'; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape (I Thess. 5:3). A perfect example of this is Chamberlain's sincere but naive act of flying to Munich and signing a worthless piece of paper with Hitler in 1938. A year later there was war. The peace marchers and nuclear freeze movement are naive and unwittingly encouraging the evil nations of this world.
There are many Christians who believe that God does not want a unified world. Christians look only to the afterlife as being a place where Christians will live happily ever after and they will forget the billions of people who are doomed to hell. It is a serious flaw in Christian theology that sees any attempt to world unity as satanic. Arnold Toynbee often spoke of the world moving to unity. He said, Living together as a single family is the only future mankind can have now that Western technology has simultaneously annihilated distance and invented the atomic bomb ... the alternative to the destruction of the human race is a worldwide fusion of all the tribes, nations, civilizations, and religions of man. Billy Graham and other Christian leaders do not know that the Messiah comes to unify mankind on earth.
God is guiding the world to unity. The historian Arnold Toynbee found 28 cultural spheres in history. God has worked to decrease that number to four: Judea-Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. The Messiah comes on the foundation of Christianity but will unite all religions into God's family where there is one religion. Toynbee is the most famous historian of the 20th century. He predicted there would be world unification under one government brought about by a new religion. He felt that a nation from the far east would be the unifier of mankind.
5. The Bible says in the Last Days there will arise an Anti-Christ who will try to rule the world. Christians fail to see that the Antichrist is Communism. Because the Messiah will speak of one unified world with one culture and one language his efforts will be viewed by many Christians as the Anti-Christ.
Christianity has always taught that Jesus is coming back to save the world. Fundamental and Pentecostal Christians believe Jesus is coming on the clouds. They believe in the rapture which says that on Judgement Day devout Christians will rise in the air to meet Jesus in the sky. Those who are alive will drift to heaven, and those who have died will come out of their graves, their physical body restored, and will rise also. This rising of the dead is called resurrection. After all Christians are safe with Jesus, those left on earth will be tortured in hell and the earth will be destroyed.
The Divine Principle teaches that none of these events will take place. Some Christians have believed these things because they have mistakenly read the Bible literally when they should have read it symbolically.