The West, Israel, and the Antichrist

The danger of naivety about a Christ-less Western world

Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash

Before Christmas I preached through the New Testament letter of 2 Thessalonians. It’s a very short letter — only three chapters — but the second chapter is a significant one, because it contains one of the major sections of teaching in the New Testament about the antichrist (or “man of lawlessness”, as Paul calls him).

You can see my sermon on that particular passage here, if you want:

Over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about all these things, and what’s come out of it is that I think God wants to send a warning message to the West. And when I say “the West,” I don’t mean our elites or establishment who seem to hate the West and want its destruction. I’m talking about people who love the Western world and want it to flourish and continue — conservatives, Christians, and those on the (traditional) right.

What I want to argue here is that we are in danger of falling for a Christ-less Western world. I fear that many people in the West have been deceived. Much of this seems to revolve around Israel, which is where we’re going to finish.

Let’s start by thinking about what we know of the antichrist.

Please bear with me here — it may not be immediately clear what relevance the antichrist has to Israel or the West, but all will be revealed…

What the antichrist will be like

If you’re anything like me, a few years ago you might have considered people talking about the antichrist to be somewhat eccentric, on a par with the people who used to wear sandwich boards saying “the end is nigh”, or maybe even conspiracy theorists. People who talked about the antichrist were just a bit… extreme. However, the Bible does speak about these things, and I believe we ignore this teaching at our peril. If God saw fit to warn us about what is to come, we should listen. I believe a big part of the problem with the church today is that there are parts of the Scriptures which it glosses over and even refuses to listen to - something I have written about before:

So, what do we know about the antichrist? Obviously there is far more than we have time for today, but there are three things which I’d like to highlight from 2 Thessalonians 2.

Firstly, the antichrist is entirely secular. Paul says, “He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God” (v4). The antichrist will oppose “everything that is called God or is worshiped” — that sounds very much like a secularist agenda, doesn’t it? Erasing God from public life and acting without reference to God at all, as if man is the measure of all things. And that is the ultimate goal — it will allow him to “proclaim himself to be God”. This is what we have seen as far back as the Tower of Babel — man in his pride thinks he can erase God and place himself on the throne.

Secondly, the antichrist is based on lies and deception. Count how many times these few verses refer to lies as opposed to the truth:

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie (1), and all the ways that wickedness deceives (2) those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth (3) and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion (4) so that they will believe the lie (5) and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth (6) but have delighted in wickedness. 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12

I make that SIX references to the truth / lies in these four verses! Paul emphasizes that lies are “in accordance with how Satan works”— and we know from Jesus that Satan is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). Paul even mentions a “powerful delusion”, sent by God, as a punishment for people rejecting the truth and turning to lies.

Once again, as I’ve said many times on Sacred Musings over the last few years, could this passage be any more relevant to us than it is now? We are living through a time where lies are everywhere. I often find myself thinking that I simply don’t know what to believe any more! You can’t believe the mainstream media, they simply push the approved narrative — while at the same time pretending to care about fact checking. You can’t believe videos and photos on social media — things can be digitally edited or even created by AI. And even things which seem to be a victory, such as the election of Donald Trump, might not be a victory after all. There is seemingly no end to the lies.

Thirdly, the antichrist will be a parody of the second coming. This is the biggest thing which struck me — the antichrist seems to be set up as an intentional parody of the return of Jesus Christ:

• Paul uses the word “coming” (parousia) twice about Jesus’ return (v1, v8). The same word is used in v9 to describe the “coming” of the lawless one.

• The coming of the lawless one will be accompanied by “signs and wonders”. Signs and wonders are how God testified to Jesus (see e.g. Acts 2:22; Hebrews 2:4).

Note: I believe the antichrist’s signs and wonders will be simply more deception and trickery. Once again I think the advance of technology has given us an insight into what that might be like which was not available to previous generations. Something technologically advanced could be mistaken for a genuine sign or miracle. See Arthur C. Clarke’s remarks about any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic.

• The coming of the lawless one will be global in scope — one world under one lord… just like it will be when the Lord Jesus returns.

Note: John Stott says that the one holding back the lawless one at the moment is kings / nation states. It’s interesting, looking back over the last 50 years, how the world has moved in the direction of globalism — power has been taken away from nation states and put into transnational bodies like the UN, WEF, WHO, etc. Once again, we’re back at the Tower of Babel…

There are probably more similarities you could mention, but those are the ones which jumped out to me.

If you put all this together, it seems that the world is going to be deceived by a ‘secular’ Messiah: one who opposes God and all religions, but who claims to have the power of a god; whose modus operandi is with lies, deception and trickery; and whose appearance will be some kind of grotesque parody of the Second Coming of Christ.

Before we think about how this connects with the West, there’s one more thing we need to look at.

A tale of two cities

One of the big contrasts in the book of Revelation is between the symbolic cities of Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon represents the powers of this world in their pride against God — think of the attitude of Nebuchadnezzar: “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30).

In Revelation, the whole earth is said to have gone astray as Babylon did (e.g. Revelation 14:8; 17:2). Babylon sets itself up as a kind of parody of the heavenly city — offering its people protection, wealth and prosperity, but — crucially — without God. In fact, it sets itself up as a rival to God.

By contrast, Jerusalem represents the heavenly city - the new creation (Revelation 21:2). Jerusalem is not built by human beings; rather, it comes down from heaven — it is made by God. It is a gift of God, from heaven to men. Babylon, by contrast, is built by humans because in their pride they think they can build something better than God. Although the spirit of Babylon has been there for millenia — from Babel to Nebuchadnezzar to the Roman Empire — one day it will grow to encompass the whole world.

The contrast between the two cities couldn’t be more stark. Babylon is a gross parody of the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city. I hope at this point it will be obvious to you how these two things marry up. The antichrist and Babylon go together: the antichrist will appear to be a kind of saviour, but he will usher in Babylon and not the new Jerusalem. All of the three points that are true of the antichrist are also true of Babylon (secular; based on lies; a parody of the godly truth).

Babylon and the West

We are finally in a position to think about how Babylon relates to the West. The West is often held up as a model of enlightenment: liberal, secular democracy has given a level of prosperity and material wealth which is unrivalled in human history. At the same time, Western civilisation is now very much ‘post-Christian’: it used to be Christian, but our leaders ditched Christianity long ago and have slowly been seeking to eradicate it from public life.

Note: If you’re interested in the secularisation of the West, you might be interested in the podcast series I did on Os Guinness’ book The Gravedigger Files - you can find the first one here.

I think we can see now, in a way that our forebears didn’t, how Babylon is going to play out. Let’s think about the West under those three headings that we looked at:

#1: Secular

The West is now secular in a way that no civilisation ever has been secular. I think this is especially true of Europe, less so of America, although the ruling elites across the two continents are the same. The leadership is secular, even if there are parts of America where church attendance is far more common than in most of Europe. (I’m not convinced that Trump is going to stand against the globalists).

#2: Lies

The West today lies as much as any communist regime ever did. How does the West get away with it? Because people think it doesn’t lie. People think that Western politicians and media are basically truthful, even if there are a few bad apples. Or even if things are bad, they’re not that bad. What’s more, Western leaders and governments deliberately stoke this view. They paint themselves themselves as morally whiter than white, while simultaneously painting their enemies as devils.

It seems to me that the West has developed a very clever and sophisticated way of lying: paint yourselves to be the good guys and the others to be the bad guy — making full use of propaganda — then people won’t suspect you of lying. This kind of thing has been happening since time immemorial, but the advent of mass media and the internet has made it possible in a way that it never was before. This is how you can make a big song and dance about caring for human rights, while at the same time implementing the biggest human rights abuses ever perpetrated by a modern Western government (namely, what happened during covid).

Because this tactic has been so successful, it’s kept many people in the dark. I was under its sway for a long time — which is why I struggled at first to accept that events such as 9/11 or the 7/7 bombings were false flag operations. I simply couldn’t believe that Western governments could treat the lives of their own citizens so casually and lie so brazenly. I couldn’t believe that Western governments could do something so evil, blame someone else, and use it as a pretext to go to war. (Those two links are good films on those two events — if you haven’t seen them and this is new to you, please check them out for yourself).

It’s utterly devious, isn’t it? Satan must be so proud. Because it is very much a strategy “in accordance with the way Satan works”: Satan is “the accuser”, the one who continually accuses the brethren day and night (Revelation 12:10 — the name ‘diabolos’ is taken from the Greek word which means to accuse). Satan himself masquerades as an “angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). In other words, Satan appears to be good himself without any actual goodness, and makes others appear to be bad — despite the fact that the truth is the opposite.

Doesn’t it strike you that this is exactly what Western governments are up to on many fronts at the moment — e.g. Putin, Assad, and so on. How many leaders of other countries have Western leaders demonised?

#3: A parody of God

One of the things which has become increasingly clear over the last few years is how Western leaders have been claiming to be able to do things which only God can do. For example, the ability to control a virus, or to save us from climate change. Western leaders think they can create a kind of utopia on earth without God. They think they can do it by bombing all their enemies into oblivion, or playing clever tactical games.

In particular there seems to be a focus on technology to try and solve all of humanity’s problems — transhumanism, digital ID and digital currency, and so on — these things have all beeen talked about or promoted by Western governments in recent months. Think about Yuval Harari’s comment in his book Homo Deus: “Scientists today can do much better than the Old Testament God.”

In short, Western governments today are coming together in their pride to build Jerusalem here on earth, entirely by their own efforts, without reference to God — but their building is full of deception and lies. You could say that the motto of Western powers today is like this stanza from William Blake’s poem, Jerusalem:

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.

This brings us neatly to the final section about Israel.

Israel and ‘building Jerusalem’

Israel is rarely out of the news these days due to what’s happening in Gaza. In fact, the whole region is in our news cycles — for example, the fall of Syria. (James Corbett did a good piece explaining what’s going on in Syria — including the involvement of Israel in what’s happening).

I wanted to finish with Israel because this is where a lot of pro-Western people are very naive today. A lot of people on the right seem to think that we in the West should support Israel. I have written before about the West’s uncritical support of Israel and why Christians need to think more carefully. (That post was written in March 2024 and since then it has consistently been the #1 thing people read on my blog).

What I’m going to do is run through those three headings we looked at before, but this time apply them directly to the state of Israel.

#1: Secular

I think this is one of the most shocking things about Israel. You have to be Jewish to become an Israeli citizen — but you don’t have to believe in God. However, you can’t become an Israeli citizen if you have converted to another religion. Someone who has converted to another religion is considered to have renounced their Jewish identity… but you can be an atheist Jew. It seems that secularism is not only tolerated but encouraged in Israel.

But it’s not just that — consider also the place that Judaism has for Jesus. Recently I watched this helpful conversation between Calvin Robinson and Joel Webbon:

The whole thing is worth watching, but one of the most powerful points Joel made is that every other major world religion has some kind of a place for Jesus. Maybe as a prophet, or at least a moral teacher. Every religion… except Judaism, where Jesus is not given a place at all. You could say that Judaism today is predicated on its rejection of Christ. In that sense, Judaism is the most pernicious of every world religion because it is explicitly anti-Christian.

I wonder whether it is really right for Christian countries to have such a close relationship with the state of Israel given that Israel rejects the West’s Christianity. Food for thought.

#2: Lies

Israel is no stranger to false flag operations — in fact, it virtually invented them. I recently watched the Candace Owens interview with a survivor of the attack on the USS Liberty. (Again, well worth watching if you haven’t seen it already). I wasn’t aware of this until I watched the interview — not least because the media have done a good job covering it up — but the USS Liberty was a US Navy ship that was attacked by the Israeli army back in the 1960s. It seems that this was part of a ploy to bring the US into the Six-Day War.

I’ve already mentioned 9/11 and 7/7. Interestingly, both of those events seems to have had some kind of Israeli involvement - e.g. the five dancing Israelis who were sent to “document the event” of 9/11. And Benjamin Netenyahu was actually in London on the day of 7/7 — he was apparently warned not to venture out 30 minutes before the first explosion…

This brings us to the events of 7th October. There are, again, serious question marks over what exactly happened on that day — this podcast with Bret Weinstein and Efrat Fenigson is a good place to start. But one of the things that strikes me repeatedly is how much this is an ‘information’ war — I keep seeing pictures on X of attractive young people who were either killed on that day or who are now hostages. (They are all attractive — apparently Hamas didn’t kill anyone ugly). Everything from Hamas — every video or piece of information they produce — is portrayed as suspect, faked and manipulated; whereas everything Israel do is portrayed as solid, gold-plated truth.

I can’t go into all the ins and outs of it — it’s exhausting even thinking about! — but I will simply say that a nation with a track record like Israel (like the rest of the Western world) does not deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt in these matters. I just feel like what comes out of pro-Israel accounts on X is not the truth, but propaganda designed to make people sympathetic to the Israeli cause. It’s the same-old same-old: paint oneself as the angels and the others as the demons.

#3: A parody of God

This ties in with the William Blake poem I quoted above. Could it not be any more clear what’s going on, when we are talking about literal, earthly Jerusalem?

It seems to me that this is what is going on with Israel: seeking to build Jerusalem, but doing it in a way which is consistent with the antichrist.

This leads me to speculate and wonder whether the antichrist will actually be an Israeli. It seems fitting to me, somehow — that this secular, anti-Christian, prideful leader could come from within the Israeli nation. It seems to me that things are going that way — Israel seems to be leading the Western world in some of these problems. This is not to excuse Western nations, of course — all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

I only write this because I think there is a kind of childlike naivety about Israel when it comes to the pro-Western side in this country at the moment. People seem to think that Israel are the only nation that cannot do any wrong, and which should be supported at every opportunity. But this kind of naivety is wrong, even dangerously wrong.

What I am hoping for is that Western nations will once again return to their Christian roots, and realise that our Christian roots are the only basis for us to relate to other nations. Israel shows us what a Christ-less Western nation is like — and sadly too many Western countries have been all too happy to follow.

Final word

One thing that gives me hope is that more and more people are waking up to what’s going on. Candace Owens has talked a lot about Israel on her podcast — and she has been relentlessly mocked for it on social media (one recent high-profile example being the Babylon Bee). I don’t listen to her podcast on a regular basis, but from the things I have seen she seems to be looking at the evidence rather than doing anything out of some kind of antisemitic hatred. I don’t want to be an apologist for her as I don’t know enough about it, but her interview with the USS Liberty Survivor seemed to be factual.

Similarly, Calvin Robinson has continued talking about this issue, despite having a lot of pushback.

My hope, as always, is that we will be able to discuss these issues with humility and grace, always seeking the truth. We urgently need to heed Jesus’ call to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us — something which the Western world needs to get back to if it is to improve. (How different Western foreign policy would have been had it echoed what Jesus said, rather than ‘false flag’ operations!)

The apostle Paul said:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. Romans 1:16

The gospel is the only hope for any of us, Jew and Gentile alike. I continue to pray this year that God will bring the glorious light of the gospel to shine a light all over the world.

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