Desecration: Antichrist Takes the Throne
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He pulled from his pocket the tiny urn and removed the lid, shaking the contents into the wind. “She defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by her testimony, for she did not love her life but laid it down for him.”
Abdullah nudged Rayford and looked up. In the distance came a screaming pair of fighter-bombers. Within seconds the people noticed them too and began to murmur.
In New Babylon Chang hunched over his computer, watching what Carpathia saw transmitted from the cockpit of one of the bombers. Chang layered the audio from the plane with the bug in Carpathia’s office. It became clear that Leon, Viv, Suhail, and Carpathia’s secretary had gathered around the monitor in the potentate’s office.
“Target locked, armed,” one pilot said. The other repeated him.
“Here we go!” Nicolae said, his voice high-pitched. “Here we go!”
Tsion held out his hands. “Do not be distracted, beloved, for we rest in the sure promises of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that we have been delivered to this place of refuge that cannot be penetrated by the enemy of his Son.” He had to wait out the roar of the jets as they passed over them and banked in the distance.
“Yes!” Nicolae squealed. “Show yourselves; then launch upon your return!”
As the machines of war returned, Tsion said, “Please join me on your knees, heads bowed, hearts in tune with God, secure in his promise that the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.”
Rayford knelt but kept his eyes on the bombers. As they screamed into range again, they simultaneously dropped payloads headed directly for the high place, epicenter of a million kneeling souls.
“Yessss!” Carpathia howled. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”
EPILOGUE
Rejoice, O Heavens! You citizens of heaven, rejoice! Be glad! But woe to you people of the world, for the devil has come down to you in great anger, knowing that he has little time.
Revelation 12:12, TLB
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JERRY B. JENKINS, former vice president for publishing at Moody Bible Institute of Chicago and currently chairman of the board of trustees, is the author of more than 175 books, including the best-selling Left Behind series. Twenty of his books have reached the New York Times Best Sellers List (seven in the number-one spot) and have also appeared on the USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Wall Street Journal best-seller lists. Desecration, book nine in the Left Behind series, was the best-selling book in the world in 2001. His books have sold nearly 70 million copies.
Also the former editor of Moody magazine, his writing has appeared in Time, Reader’s Digest, Parade, Guideposts, Christianity Today, and dozens of other periodicals. He was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine in 2004.
His nonfiction books include as-told-to biographies with Hank Aaron, Bill Gaither, Orel Hershiser, Luis Palau, Joe Gibbs, Walter Payton, and Nolan Ryan among many others. The Hershiser and Ryan books reached the New York Times Best Sellers List.
Jenkins assisted Dr. Billy Graham with his autobiography, Just As I Am, also a New York Times best seller. Jerry spent 13 months working with Dr. Graham, which he considers the privilege of a lifetime.
Jerry owns Jenkins Entertainment, a filmmaking company in Los Angeles, which produced the critically acclaimed movie Midnight Clear, based on his book of the same name. See www.Jenkins-Entertainment.com.
Jerry Jenkins also owns the Christian Writers Guild, which aims to train tomorrow’s professional Christian writers. Under Jerry’s leadership, the guild has expanded to include college-credit courses, a critique service, literary registration services, and writing contests, as well as an annual conference. See www.ChristianWritersGuild.com.
As a marriage-and-family author, Jerry has been a frequent guest on Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio program and is a sought-after speaker and humorist. See www.AmbassadorSpeakers.com.
Jerry has been awarded four honorary doctorates. He and his wife, Dianna, have three grown sons and six grandchildren.
Check out Jerry’s blog at http://jerryjenkins.blogspot.com.
DR. TIM LAHAYE (www.timlahaye.com), who conceived and created the idea of fictionalizing an account of the Rapture and the Tribulation, is a noted author, minister, and nationally recognized speaker on Bible prophecy. He is the founder of both Tim LaHaye Ministries and The PreTrib Research Center.
Dr. LaHaye speaks at many of the major Bible prophecy conferences in the U.S. and Canada, where his prophecy books are very popular.
Dr. LaHaye earned a doctor of ministry degree from Western Theological Seminary and received an honorary doctor of literature degree from Liberty University. For 25 years he pastored one of the nation’s outstanding churches in San Diego, which grew to three locations. During that time he founded two accredited Christian high schools, a Christian school system of ten schools, and San Diego Christian College (formerly known as Christian Heritage College).
There are over 59 million copies of Dr. LaHaye’s 50 nonfiction books, some of which have been published in over 37 languages. He has written books on a wide variety of subjects, such as family life, temperaments, and Bible prophecy. His fiction works include the Left Behind series and the Jesus Chronicles, written with Jerry B. Jenkins. LaHaye’s other fiction series of prophetic novels consist of the Babylon Rising series and The End series. Dr. LaHaye is the father of four grown children, grandfather of nine, and great-grandfather of eleven.
TEST YOUR PROPHECY IQ
Will America have a role in the end times?
See answer at the end of this section.
THE TRUTH BEHIND THE FICTION
THE PROPHECY BEHIND THE SCENES
In this volume of the Left Behind series we saw Satan himself, through the resurrected and indwelt Antichrist, carry out the abomination of desolation against the temple in Jerusalem. Obviously, since the second temple of Jesus’ time was leveled during the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70, the temple must be rebuilt for this to occur. In their 1999 nonfiction book Are We Living in the End Times? Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins devote an entire chapter to discussing “The Temple Rebuilt.”
The Scripture Speaks
In the Olivet discourse, Jesus said, “Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place. . .” (Matthew 24:15).
Both Daniel (9:27, 11:31) and John (Revelation 11:1-2) place this awful event in the middle of the Tribulation, at the start of what our Lord called “great tribulation.” Clearly, if the temple is to be desecrated at that point, it must be built earlier.
When Will the Temple Be Rebuilt?
Anyone interested in end-times events has his eyes on the temple project. Ever since the Jews took temporary possession of the temple site after the Six Day War in 1967, there have been rumors that various groups have been working clandestinely to prepare all the materials it needs—from the robes of the priests to the tapestry in the temple.
One of the most active individuals gathering materials for the Tribulation temple has been Gershom Salomon of the Temple Mount Faithful, who uses activist measures in an attempt to motivate fellow countrymen to rebuild the temple. On one occasion Salomon tried to lay a four-and-a-half-ton cornerstone upon the Temple Mount, but he was halted by the Israeli government. Officials know that the Middle East is a tinder box waiting for a spark to thrust the nation into another war; and nothing would start it sooner and protract it longer than to desecrate this Muslim holy site.
In their excellent pocket book series The Truth about the Last Days Temple, researchers Thomas Ice and Timothy Demy wrote, “Many plans are being made for a rebuilt Temple and many diverse groups in Israel are preparing for it.”
One group Ice and Demy cite is the Temple Institute, led by Israel Ariel. This organization has made almost all of the 102 utensils ne
eded for temple worship according to biblical and rabbinic standards. These are on display for tourists to see at the Temple Institute tourist center in the Old City in Jerusalem. The Ateret Cohanim has established a yeshiva (religious school) for the education and training of temple priests. Their task is to research regulations, gather qualified Levites, and train them for a future priesthood. Many yeshivas have arisen throughout Jerusalem to prepare for the eventuality of a rebuilt, fully functioning temple service.
Possible Scenarios for Temple Rebuilding
Some observers see an insoluble problem to the rebuilding of the temple because the Muslim Dome of the Rock is yet located on the only possible site. But careful students of the prophetic Scriptures see several possible solutions. Consider these suggestions:
1. The temple could be rebuilt sometime between Russia’s attack on Israel (Ezekiel 38–39) and the beginning of the Tribulation.
Precisely when Russia and her Muslim allies will attack Israel is not possible to determine. It could happen prior to God’s last soul harvest just before the Rapture. Or it could come after the Rapture and before the Tribulation. Keep in mind, there could be a period of days to several years between the Rapture and the beginning of the Tribulation. Since the Jews will burn the remains of the war—described in Ezekiel 38–39—for seven winters (39:9) and because they will be driven out of the Holy Land by the Antichrist during the last three and a half years of the Tribulation (Revelation 12:6, 14), it would seem logical that the destruction of Russia and her allies will occur at least three and a half years prior to the Tribulation. If that deduction is correct, there will be ample time for the Jews to rebuild their temple. In one moment God will have broken the back of the Muslim hordes who hate Israel so intensely, freeing Israel to rebuild her temple. This would be a drawing card to Jews around the world to return to the Holy Land to worship in their third temple.
2. The Antichrist could negotiate an agreement between Israel and the remnants of the Arab world to relocate them to other countries.
Since the Antichrist will come on the world scene after the strength of Russia and her Arab allies has been broken, he could talk the Muslim survivors into moving their sacred mosque somewhere else.
3. One provision of the covenant between the Antichrist and Israel might permit the Jews to rebuild their temple.
The Tribulation officially begins when the Antichrist signs a seven-year covenant with Israel (Daniel 9:27). He will not fully honor that covenant but will break it in the middle of the seven years, desecrate the new temple, then launch the most anti-Semitic crusade in history.
No one knows exactly what is in the covenant. The covenant imagined in the Left Behind series includes promises to dismantle and move the Dome of the Rock to the new capital in Babylon, where the mosque will be set up as a Muslim holy place. That would solve the tension between the Jews and Arabs over the Temple Mount and allow the Jews to rebuild their temple.
How Close Are We?
Fifty years ago we would not have been discussing the possibility of reconstructing the Jewish temple. It was impossible. Today that is no longer true. For the first time since the destruction of the second temple in AD 70, we are on the verge of seeing a third temple built in fulfillment of prophecy—another powerful evidence that we have more reason to believe Christ could return in our lifetime than any generation before us!
IN THE MEANTIME . . . since the Left Behind series was first published.
Desecration was published in 2001, two years after Are We Living in the End Times? Since then there has been even further interest in rebuilding the temple. One of the most significant events was the reconstitution of the Jewish Sanhedrin, which Mark Hitchcock described in a July 27, 2005, article in the Left Behind Prophecy Newsletter (2003–2009):
Historically, the Sanhedrin was a group of 71 Jewish men (70 leaders plus the high priest) that originated when God ordered Moses to choose 70 men from Israel to help him judge the people (Exodus 18:17-26). The Sanhedrin exercised very limited authority until the Jewish exile under the Persians, when it began to adjudicate the difficult questions of the Jewish people. At the time of Christ, they were the Supreme Court of Israel.
According to Jewish sources the last meeting of the Sanhedrin occurred in about AD 425 in the city of Tiberias. To commemorate the reconvening of the new Sanhedrin almost 1,600 years later, the announcement was made from Tiberias on October 13, 2004.
The Sanhedrin has held regular, monthly meetings in Jerusalem. But the meeting on February 7-9, 2005, is especially interesting from the perspective of end-times prophecy. The focus on the meeting was the rebuilding of the Jewish temple on the temple mount in Jerusalem.
The Sanhedrin met in early June 2005 and elected a new president. Also, at that meeting the Sanhedrin issued an official call to rebuild the temple. They plan to establish a forum of architects and engineers to begin detailed plans for rebuilding the Temple. Of course, this move is fraught with all kinds of religious and political volatility. The Sanhedrin is further “calling on the Jewish people to contribute toward the acquisition of materials for the purpose of rebuilding the Temple—including the gathering and preparation of prefabricated, disassembled portions to be stored and ready for rapid assembly, ‘in the manner of King David’” (WorldNetDaily, June 8, 2005). The new Sanhedrin views part of its purpose as to take steps to prepare the modern state of Israel for a New Temple and ultimately the coming of the Messiah.
A WorldNetDaily story on August 5, 2009, reported that Adnan Oktar, the pen name of a “controversial but highly influential Muslim intellectual and author . . . met with three representatives from the re-established Jewish Sanhedrin . . . to discuss how religious Muslims, Jews and Christians can work together on the project.”
In an August 2009 newsletter article (echoed by a link on Joel C. Rosenberg’s blog), Mark Hitchcock referred to a public opinion poll that showed widespread support for the reconstruction of the temple.
Ynetnews reported the startling findings of a new poll about the temple on July 30, 2009. The poll asked respondents whether they wanted to see the Temple rebuilt. “Sixty-four percent responded favorably, while 36% said no. An analysis of the answers showed that not only the ultra-Orthodox and the religious look forward to the rebuilding of the Temple (100% and 97% respectively), but also the traditional public (91%) and many seculars—47%. . . . The Temple was destroyed 1,942 years ago, and almost two-thirds of the population want to see it rebuilt, including 47% of seculars.
Even if the temple is not rebuilt until after the Rapture, as Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins suggest, the fact that there is already such sincere desire to see it happen is certainly a sign of the last days.
TEST YOUR PROPEHCY IQ—ANSWER
Unlike other nations and regions where the allusions of prophecy find considerable agreement (Europe, Russia, northern Africa, the Middle East, and even the Far East), America and the western hemisphere in general do not fit the prophetic templates of Scripture. There are a number of possible reasons for this, which we’ll cover in the next volume, The Remnant.