The Rapture and Leviathan
Then I stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name. Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast. Revelation 13:1-3
For everyone alive in the world today, this is all we have ever known. Wars, rumors of wars, crime, violence, plagues, diseases, natural disasters, and growing lawlessness (anarchism) and economic disparity are par for the course of everyday life here on planet earth. In fact, for most of human history (and to paraphrase Thomas Hobbes), life was nasty, brutish, and short.
In the last 70 years or so, modern technology and advancements in medicine have alleviated a lot of the brutality of everyday life. This has enabled the world’s population to more than quadruple in just one century. However, even with our advancements in technology, political machinations have proven to be the most significant threat to humanity in the 20th century. As Marxism, Socialism, and Communism took hold in various places, the total dead in their wake has been in excess of 100 million. In fact, more people died in the 20th century due to these ideas then all the wars for the past twenty centuries combined.
Assessment
All things considered, we here in the West live in a generation that thinks that the way things are now, are the way they will always be. This view is known as uniformitarianism. Similarly, every age has thought that way until something came along that revolutionized either how they lived, or completely disrupted their world they lived in; wars, famines, plagues, automobiles, airplanes, the atom bomb, computers, Internet, etc.
But since we live in an age where technology keeps evolving so quickly (flying cars, trans-humanism, artificial intelligence, 5 and 6G networks, crypto-currency, quantum computers, hypersonic travel, genetic modifications and all the rest), the expectation amongst “the experts” is that we will continue to evolve as a race until humans and machines are virtually indistinguishable. In an era of perpetual modernization, we tend to think that mankind will continue upward on a trajectory that achieves a Star Trek paradigm of a humanistic utopia.
Speaking of Thomas Hobbes, he is most famous for his treatise on the social-political contract titled Leviathan. Below is a short summation of that text.
In 1649, a civil war broke out over who would rule England—Parliament or King Charles I. The war ended with the beheading of the king. Shortly after Charles was executed, an English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), wrote Leviathan, a defense of the absolute power of kings. The title of the book referred to a leviathan, a mythological, whale-like sea monster that devoured whole ships. Hobbes likened the leviathan to government, a powerful state created to impose order.
Hobbes believed that a government headed by a king was the best form that the sovereign could take. Placing all power in the hands of a king would mean more resolute and consistent exercise of political authority, Hobbes argued. Hobbes also maintained that the social contract was an agreement only among the people and not between them and their king. Once the people had given absolute power to the king, they had no right to revolt against him.
Hobbes warned against the church meddling with the king’s government. He feared religion could become a source of civil war. Thus, he advised that the church become a department of the king’s government, which would closely control all religious affairs. In any conflict between divine and royal law, Hobbes wrote, the individual should obey the king or choose death. (Source) Emphasis mine
Hobbes political-philosophical theories have greatly influenced many (including America’s Founding Fathers) throughout the ages. Having recently experienced firsthand the tyranny of a king, the Founding Fathers rightly rejected his ideas on assigning all power to an individual or group, which is how we ended up with a government that operates under a separation of powers.
In retrospect, Leviathan can hardly been seen as intentionally prophetic, there is embedded within it an ages-long desire to ultimately consolidate power into the hands of one person. This desire for replacing anarchy for “peace and security” can be traced all the way back to a man named Nimrod and the Tower of Babel.
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them…So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. Genesis 11:5-9
In other words, what God has torn asunder, let not man rejoin. But ever since, man has consistently (and futilely) sought to bring everyone back together. Most have attempted to unify the world under threat of force: The Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Muslims, Napoleon, Adolph Hitler, and various communist dictators all have tried and failed. However, there has never been as serious a movement for a new world order as there has been since the end of World War II. The chartering of the United Nations on 26 June 1945, marked a new era in which world powers would willingly subjugate themselves (in varying degrees) over to a world political and economic body.
There are many, particularly within secretive societies and Marxist groups, which believe consolidating power into a single source, is the only way to solve the world’s problems. But with the ascendancy of the United States after World Wars I and II, this idea of a single-world-order would have to wait. But in their waiting, proponents of this new world order have been quietly laying a foundation of political and economic spider webs so intrinsic, that NO future government or political body would ever escape it. They are busy consolidating as much power, into as few of hands as possible. This is not some nefarious scheme to them, but a way to bring complete and total peace and security to a planet in disarray.
According to Revelation 13, there is coming a world government that will one day control every facet of life on earth with absolute authority. This government is represented symbolically as a beast rising out of the sea. The beast is represented as an amalgamation of many different kinds of animals (kingdoms). The symbolism of the animal (kingdoms) comes from Daniel 7-8. The symbolism for the sea represents the ‘sea of humanity,’ as later explained in Revelation 17:15. Those left behind after the Rapture of the Church will enter into Daniel’s 70th Week (Daniel 9:24-27) and willingly give their authority over to this monstrosity of a government.
In turn, this world government will consolidate all its authority into the hands of one man, the Antichrist. Of course, he will not come out and say he is the Antichrist but rather, will appear as the “rider on the white horse,” bearing a bow with no arrows and wearing a victor’s crown (Rev. 6:1-2). Daniel states that he will go about destroying fearfully through deception and lies (Daniel 8:24-25). Both Daniel and later the Apostle Paul state that his blasphemies against God and Christ, are stacked up to the heavens (Dan. 7:24, 2nd Thessalonians 2:4).
Conclusion
But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. 1st Thess. 5:1-3
Every single past attempt at unifying the world has always lacked the single most important ingredient, the perfect crisis. I believe that the perfect crisis will manifest itself in the form of the Rapture of the Church, which will empty the world of all Spirit-filled believers. This sudden removal will also remove the restraining influence that the Holy Spirit has exercised over the earth for the past 2,000 years (2nd Thess. 2:7; 1st John 2:18). The Holy Spirit (by way of the Church) has kept the spirit of antichrist at bay since Pentecost.
But as we draw nearer to the end, we have seen the churches become more and more apostate, subsequently losing ground in virtually every sector and facet of society they once held. Social norms and values have been corrupted to the point that we (as a society) can no longer can distinguish right from wrong. This is evidenced by the rise in this antichrist spirit that we see sweeping the world.
Along with the perfect crisis, comes a world already primed and ready through these transnational organizations and economies, technology, secular humanism, paganism, and indoctrination to believe the lie that will abound in the aftermath of the Rapture. We do not know what that lie will be at present, but if the world can accept the scientific “truths” of the Big Bang theory, Darwinian evolution, man-made global warming, yet, deny the scientific truth that men and women are biologically different; the world is very much ready to believe anything.
So why crisis by Rapture?
Having read numerous Department of Defense and National Security briefs over the years concerning every possible threat and / or scenario the United States faces, not one of them ever mentions a rapture-type scenario. To the world, a “rapture” is beyond preposterous. To most of the mainline Christian churches, a “rapture” is impossible. To the overwhelming majority in the media and the academic elite, the rapture is the epitome foolishness. In fact, the only time it is ever brought up in the public sense, is only to mock someone who has unwisely (and unbiblically) advocated a particular date they think it will happen.
But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 1st Corinthians 2:7
If crisis was not the intended effect (for those on the earth) in the Rapture’s wake, why couldn’t God just make all true born-again Christians immortal and immune to both sin and wrath during the 70th Week? However, it is exactly the opposite. We are not promised to be kept through this period of testing, but too be kept from the very time (hour) of it.
Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth. Revelation 3:10
For all intents and purposes, the Rapture was designed the way it was in order to create this perfect vehicle for ushering in an immediate, global crisis. This crisis allows this sea monster (along with the Antichrist) to usher in total, absolute control. This final and terrifying governmental system has the total backing of Satan, that serpent of old. It will crush all underfoot and bring about destruction so severe, that if God does not intervene, no flesh would survive (Matt. 24:20-22). But fear not,
In that day the Lord with His severe sword, great and strong,
Will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent,
Leviathan that twisted serpent;
And He will slay the reptile that is in the sea. Isaiah 27:1
Even so, Maranatha!