APOSTASY’S FINAL ENTICEMENTS & JUDGMENTS

 

Chapter 5 – of The False Prophet

 

By

Doug Krieger

 

THE ANOINTING OF PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

 

“The presidential campaign was Texas on a grander scale. As he prepared to run, in 1999, Bush assembled leading pastors at the governor's mansion for a ‘laying-on of hands,’ and told them he’d been ‘called’ to seek higher office. In the GOP primaries, he outmaneuvered the field by practicing what one rival, Gary Bauer, called ‘identity politics.’ Others tried to woo evangelicals by pledging strict allegiance on issues such as abortion and gay rights. ‘Bush talked about his faith,’ said Bauer, ‘and people just believed him—and believed in him.’” Author: Howard Fineman (Newsweek Magazine)

 

What world leader of an earthly kingdom or tribal chieftain of the smallest tribe, can announce his entry and quest for headship—even of the most powerful nation on the planet—under the ordination of the Almighty Himself; to wit, that a call went up to solicit a cast of the most powerful shepherds and evangelical lay leaders of the American Church to attend, at the Governor’s Mansion in Austin, Texas, a most incredible ceremony?  Here, the announcement to run for the Presidency was made by Mr. Bush; here, the hands of this leadership were placed upon his head, which was anointed with oil—and prayers were made to solicit divine intervention into the affairs of men through this man for the 2000 election. 

 

These “Evangelical stakeholders” experienced an unforgettable event—an event, which in today’s modern world, is unprecedented in the annals of modern governments—and if you think for one moment that these same leaders would not contend for the 2004 election of George W. Bush, then you are one of the most naïve of humankind! 

 

EUROPEAN IGNORANCE OF THE AMERICAN “EXPERIMENT”

 

The secular states of Europe find this religious attachment to American government unfathomable at best, and her resurgent moral authority, as nothing more than self-righteous posturing and “cowboy” diplomacy gone amok.  When they realize it is God-fearing Americans, who simply refuse to agree with the noble but mendacious concept of service to the State, they are flabbergasted, to say the lest; instead, they see Christians at the lead who fane honesty in the name of Christ’s Kingdom, while all the while deeply indebted to the mammon of unrighteousness and the political power that comes from the State.  Unfortunately, their consternation is compromised by their own greed (Oil for Food?)—thence, they are hardly virulent in their hypocritical dissuasions.

 

But, Europe’s outrage centers on the moral intransigence of this Woman who rides the Beast!  Akin to a group of white sharks, circling for the kill, they will lunge out at one another, if and when their instincts dictate to suffice their insatiable cravings.

 

Meanwhile, believers in America unwittingly buttress these righteous projections perceived by the world by waging their “cultural wars” upon our own shores—wars without, and wars within.

 

THE “ENEMY WITHIN” – THE TARGET OF RELIGIOUS OUTRAGE

 

There’s an “enemy within” who must be stopped—that “enemy” is another vast sea of humans who represent, according to people like Michael Savage and other conservative talk show hosts, the greatest threat to America’s liberty and security, since the founding of the experiment.  The enemy resides in the Democrat Party, in the ACLU, most of Hollywood, Labor’s leadership, the “femi-Nazis,” the entire “Cabaret Society” and is filled with hundreds of thousands of “America haters, pinkos, socialists and commies” who need to shut up and get behind the President or suffer the ultimate consequences for their behavior and subversion—they should unite behind the War on Terrorism!

 

Unwittingly, the people of God have been distracted by neocons who permeate the airwaves with “social issues” – while giving superficial lip service, at best, to the monstrous disparity of wealth taking place in their own backyards.  The downsizing, outsourcing, reallocation of resources and what has become known as the Wal-Martization of the American workplace continues unabated to this day.

 

THE “AMERICAN NEW WORLD ORDER SYSTEM”

 

Although this sounds a bit scattered—I’d like to digress further on America’s New World Order System through reinforcement of this politically sensitive caricature of Americana, by quoting from financier George Soros’ recent article, entitled:  The Bubble of American Supremacy—in spite of the fact he spent upwards of $100 Million to defeat Bush and we haven’t heard “hide nor hair” of him since:

 

“September 11 introduced a discontinuity into American foreign policy. Violations of American standards of behavior that would have been considered objectionable in ordinary times became accepted as appropriate to the circumstances. The abnormal, the radical, and the extreme have been redefined as normal. The advocates of continuity have been pursuing a rearguard action ever since.”

 

What Soros, and other political pundits on the Left fail to realize—though more are discerning the obvious—is, that although America’s projection of military might (under the Bush Doctrine) has radically changed the impression of most nations on earth toward her intentions, they either underemphasize, denigrate, or totally dismiss the religious component which has propelled this new image upon the world scene wherein “wars of selective national interest,” through the Bush doctrine of “preemptive unilateralism”—cloaked in the guise of democratic globalism—prevails.

  

PROSPERITY GOSPEL RUN AMOK!

 

Furthermore, the American Christianity which is obsessed in fighting the current War on Terrorism, is the same American Christianity that increasingly integrates its gospel with “prosperity and power”—twisting the Scriptures to justify their aggrandizements.  Complicit in this spiritual charade is the laity, who, in the main, either through neglect or assent, celebrate this travesty; and, rather than aligning themselves with the poor carpenter from Nazareth (“Who for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich”), have sided with mammon and have sought the “riches of this world” and, like the Church of the Laodiceans finds itself “ . . . rich, having become wealthy, and have need of nothing . . . and do not know that (they) are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17).

 

At this juncture—let me ask some serious questions but obviously easily answered questions.  Isn’t politics a whole lot about money?  This 2004 election is so far off the charts when it comes to campaign finances—if we added it all up (and we’ve all heard outlandish figures)—we must be approaching $1B!  Now, the “power of the purse” has altogether everything to do with the “power of politics.” 

 

Money is power in the world of Mammon—you better believe it.  So, do your addition:  Religion that amasses fortune will eventually have influence upon politics—right?  O.K., then take a gander at this little remark witnessed on Trinity Broadcasting Network this past week (mid-November, 2004) by Jesse Deplantis (a man who doesn’t hide his “spiritual pursuits” but a Charismatic Christian who is not unlike many of those caught within the Gospel of Prosperity here in America):?

 

“When are we going to yield to the anointing of wealth?  I want my stuff” (meaning he wants the things he asks of God).

 

The height of spiritual hypocrisy is reported, virtually week after week, by the American national press, who has become the de facto “prophetic voice” of the Church in exile—for most prophetic voices, like Elijah, who should expose this filthy underwear, refuse, lest they be called up before the councils and disfellowshiped.  Examples of commercial fascination abound, as the feeding frenzy of the market-driven Laodicea Church blindly stumbles along.

 

THE EVANGELICAL PONZI SCHEME

 

Of late, some $163 million was taken from evangelical ministries and churches and frittered away in one of the nation’s most notorious Ponzi scams.  Ministries like Benny Hinn, Christ for the Nations (Reinhard Bonke), the Assemblies of God, Northern California District (Dr. Glenn Cole), Marilyn Hickey, Ralph Wilkerson and scores of unsuspecting pastors and smaller denominations and churches, were swept up into the greed of “something for nothing” and promises of 50% return on their investments.  Now, the IRS, the SEC, and the FBI are engaged in one of the worst commercial exploitations in the world of religion. (Note:  This case which originally appeared in the Sacramento Bee newspaper was finally resolved in the fall of 2007 with a 40-year sentence given to Gregory Earl Setser.)

 

Apparently, one of the parishioners who lost $20,000 quoted the Bible, to wit:  “The Bible teaches that God delights in the prosperity of his servants, but it also teaches us not to love wealth, and it certainly teaches against greed.”

 

Ponzis use money from later investors to pay artificially high returns to early investors, thus attracting even more investment (so-called “new blood” added atop the ascending “pyramid scheme”).  This later investment pool, brewed by an ex-evangelist by the name of Gregory Earl Setser of San Bernardino County, CA (47), along with his wife, Cynthia, his sister, Deborah Setser, and his daughter-in-law Charnelle Setser, also promised in the EVANGELICAL AFFINITY PONZI huge profits (e.g. “returns of up to 50 percent within six months and were assured only one in 10,000 deals went bad”).

 

Scores of outraged parishioners called for the resignation of Cole (December, 2003) for abuse of church funds. 

 

Not to be outdone, evangelicals were again taken to the cleaners in another Ponzi at the very same time the Stezers were bilking the brethren.  This time a Mormon by the name of James Paul Lewis Jr. of Financial Advisory Consultants in Lake Forest, California bilked some 5,200 clients across America, pouring 813 million dollars into his Southern California investment fund.  The Associated Press carried the story from Sacramento. 5  Adding insult to injury, Lewis has been using Patriot I as an excuse not to grant refund requests, saying that millions of dollars in investments had been frozen by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

 

Again, this is what is called an “affinity fraud” in which—Lewis sent pictures of his family out to clients—smiling all the way to the bank with their money.  Investors, according to AP “never provided clients with any details on how it invests their money” (the firm apparently was in operation longer than any other Ponzi scam in America—upwards of ten years).  What I have written here is the tip of an iceberg and something read in local newspapers just in the past month!  Can you imagine what a year brings forth?

 

Hearken to this word, Church, and hearken you must:

 

“For we are not, as so many, PEDDLING (or “adulterating for gain” or “hawking”) the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ” (II Corinthians 2:17).

 

And again:

 

“But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling (again: “adulterating for gain”) the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (II Corinthians 4:4).

 

Today’s evangelical Church, particularly in America, has so compromised herself, so “adulterated” herself—prostituted herself—and has become, as the “merchants of the earth” in order to maximize her worth and impact upon the world by such worldly means, that the words of our Lord find these HAWKERS OF THE WORD OF GOD reprehensible at best, and awaiting the harshest of judgments at worst, thinking that filthy lucre bespeaks blessing and, ipso facto, power:

 

“Because you (the Laodicean Church of America) say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see.  As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.  Therefore be zealous and repent” (Revelation 3:17-18). 

 

Now do you see this woman?

 

“‘This is Wickedness!’  And he thrust her down into the basket, and threw the lead cover over its mouth . . . ‘Where are they carrying the basket?’  And he said to me, ‘To build a house for it in the land of Shinar; when it is ready, the basket will be set there on its base’” (Zechariah 5:8, 10-11).

 

DISCERNMENT MINISTRIES & BABYLON’S JUDGMENT

 

‘Tis apostasy, they say, when occult and sorcery embeds itself within the Church and Israel of old.  Those American Evangelicals rightly discern her sorceries as a plague upon the House of God.  But, Alas! These same “Discernment Ministries” have grossly overlooked her most debilitating pathologies—her harlotries and fornications with the King of Babylon (the State) and the King of Tyre (the Merchants of the Earth).  Their grievous oversight is either intentional or demonstrates a spiritual myopia of Biblical proportions. 

 

To their credit have they discerned her flirtations with the gospel of greed—but their discernments are disconnected from her fornications, which are exacerbated when that quest for wealth is aligned with the State!

 

A State, which eventually turns on her—for only Christ has come that we might have “life and have it more abundantly”—but the Beast/Antichrist can only hate and kill and bring death:  “These will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire” (Revelation 17:16).

 

Think it not difficult to understand why the angel said to John:

 

“Why did you marvel?  I will tell you the mystery (i.e., “the hidden truth”) of the woman and of the beast that carries her” (Revelation 17:7).

 

Barnhouse, Ironside, McGee, Dallas Theological Seminary, Ladd, Gundry, and many expositors of the Scriptures, have clearly seen the “Unholy Trinity” of Babylon the Great:  The Apostate Church (Religious Babylon—Mother of Harlots); Commercial Babylon (The King of Tyre); and Political/Civil Babylon (The Beast and False Prophet—the Leadership of Babylon the Great) and witness their demise in Revelation 17 (Religious Babylon); Revelation 18 (Commercial Babylon); and Revelation 19 (Civil/Political Babylon). But, Alas!  Her Religious and Commercial identities are but ONE WOMAN—that “Woman of Wickedness.”

 

This Woman—yes, this end-times Apostate Harlot is easily identified both in Zechariah and in the Revelation.  She, the SEDUCTRESS of saint and sinner, of men and merchants—awaits her executioner.  She gilded herself with the saints of the Most High—but inwardly she was full of iniquities.  She rides the Beast who will yet devour her and she fornicates with all the merchants of the earth—Who is like this Great City, Babylon?  “Your merchants were the great men of the earth, for by your sorcery all the nations were deceived . . . and in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth” (Revelation 18:23b-24).

 

Her final catastrophe shall match her idolatries, wickednesses, iniquities, adulteries, fornications, lies, thievery, falsehoods, exploitations, harlotries—yea, all her whoredoms:

 

“Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, ‘Thus with violence, the Great City Babylon shall be thrown down, and shall not be found any more.’” (Revelation 18:21)

 

LOOK CLOSELY – PIETY, PROFITS AND POLITICS – JUDGMENT DAY IS COMING!

 

Dear friends, the Lord has declared that this final judgment awaits such an apostate, wholly compromised and defiled Church—though she be gilded with the saints of the Most High.  They (i.e., the “Precious Stones of the Lord”) are enjoined with frightful clarity:  “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.  For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities” (Revelation 18:4-5).

 

Today, upon the Plain of Shinar, an imagery of prophetic magnitude descends upon the earth.  That Climax of Civilization—the Epitome of Sodom and Egypt; through greed and avarice; through cunning and deceit; and through military might; this “lover of fortresses” has gone forth both conquering and to conquer—“Who shall make war against him?”

 

And, united in his endeavors, there is this Woman of Wickedness, the Mother of Harlots, who rides upon him in victory—who celebrates by her uplifted cup for all to see, that she fully exults in her deceitful posture; as she a strides this seven-headed, ten-horned Monster of Babylon.  She is so closely identified with her King of Babylon, that she herself, along with all her apostasies and merchandising, is identified as that Great City, Babylon!  She bears the legacy of Queen Jezebel, the commercial apostasy fomented by an alliance made in hell between the followers of Elohim (King Ahab) and the King of Tyre (Jezebel).

 

Look closely—she has “morphed” once again—this time, the Church’s rider bridles her Beast so closely.  The two are a formidable match—both rider and beast—for they have conspired in the greatest deceit of the ages:  Believers and Beast—and yet, ye know not what spirit ye are of!

 

Look, look closely—yes, there is Religious Babylon found in Revelation 17, who shall be devoured by the ten-horned, seven-headed Beast from the abyss (Revelation 17:16-17); but, her harlotries, as Mystery Babylon, Mother of Harlots, extend into the description of Commercial Babylon found in Revelation 18, for the closing verse of Revelation 17 (vs. 18) must be considered:

 

“And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.”

 

Compounding her true identity in its fullness, we find that the SAME ONE, Mother of Harlots, who is “drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” in Revelation 17:6 is the SAME one spoken of in Revelation 18:24—for “in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth.”

 

Fathom, for a moment, the depth of her apostasy—but do not escape the contemporary role she now plays; however, the distance of conquistador and crusader, whose commercial aspirations and religious motivations are legendary, seems a rather safe and secure observation, doesn’t it?  Yet, are future Babylon’s harlotries, filled with inspiration and intoxication, not as rueful as her past?  Indeed—for now with her inventions and technologies, she is all the more able to suppress her foes, and enslave her masses; and, YES, all in the name of God!  Outrage of outrage—she continues unabated, undaunted in her universal quest for aggrandizements in the name of religion!

 

There is but one Woman of Wickedness found in the Bible—Zechariah 5:5-11, whose Babylonian destination reveals her true nature—for she is imprisoned in a commercial ephah headed for her base on the Plains of Shinar where she belongs!  Ancient Babylon, cradle of theocratic civilizations, of the hydra-headed python of polytheism—where politics, commerce and religion consummate in unholy, Trinitarian evil! We shall elaborate more fully in other articles upon her multiple personalities and her irrepressible abilities to corrupt and to fornicate with the kings and merchants of the earth—for both the political and commercial is in view here in her loveless desires to enrich herself and to relish the support of her admirers.

 

But, lo, her doom is sure:

 

“For true and righteous are His judgments, because He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication; and He has avenged on her the blood of His servants shed by her” (Revelation 19:2).

 

Amazed and “flabbergasted” (Revelation 17:7) when you see her—marvel no further, for this same Mother of Harlots, could, in the name of God and of Christ, slay the followers of the Lamb and of them who keep the commandments of God!  Inquisition, crusades, pogroms, witch-hunts, religious wars and conquests in the name of Christ—her legacy is fraught with the blood of His servants:  MARVEL NOT!  The convergence of piety, profits and politics collide as “The Woman rides the Beast” in Revelation 17. 

 

Unfortunately, this does not conclude our series on Apostasy.  We have attempted to distinguish and to make the contemporary nature of the subject matter relevant in today’s world—which it most certainly is.  I fully realize that many who read this are unaware of the intense Biblical metaphors, symbols and other language of Scripture used to convey spiritual realities—notwithstanding, their imagery is potent and prophetically suitable in the discourse of this eschatological phenomenon now taking place upon the American and world landscape.

 

I/we commend you to the grace of God in your search for truth and refer you to the Lord Himself, Who in spite of the horrendous apostasy of these days is still “the same, yesterday, today, and forevermore.”  His love and gift of salvation, through humble confession of faith in His absolute and eternal sacrifice for you and all men, is extended to all who call out to Him for redemption’s gift.  God bless and keep you in the midst of these most troubling and challenging times. 

 

Finally, we take no cheer in the fall of any brother or sister in the Lord, nor of their lack of discernment and folly resultant from financial mismanagement—none!  To the contrary, we are deeply saddened by this and realize that beloved men and women of God make horrendous mistakes from time to time.  It is, however, up to them to repent of their mismanagement and to seek restitution to the maximum degree for such misappropriations of the saints’ money.

 

                                     

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Back to the Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - The Apostasy comes first
Chapter 2 - The "Shrine of Micah" or "The seeker-friendly Church

Chapter 3 - Jezebel  Religion - Politics - Commerce Apostasy Then, Apostasy Now.
Chapter 4 - Apostasy: The marriage of the State& the Christian Religion through commercialism