For anyone who ever sat through history classes in Western Civilization or who read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in an English literature class, the term “crossing the Rubicon” will be familiar.

Before Julius Caesar became Emperor of Rome (thus becoming the first Caesar), he was a brilliant general. In his military campaigns against the Gauls, the man who would become the first Roman emperor was appointed governor of the region of southern Gaul and northern Italy. After his hugely successful military campaigns in Gaul, the Roman Senate ordered Julius Caesar to disband his army and return alone to Rome (where the Senate could better control their brilliant but highly ambitious general). Julius Caesar was ordered by the Senate to disband his armies and leave them in Northern Italy. He was explicitly ordered not to bring his army across the Rubicon River.

In the sight of the Senate, crossing the Rubicon River with his army would be viewed as an act of treason – an insurrection, and according to Roman law, an act of war. The Rubicon River was the northern boundary of Italy. However, in 49 BC, in defiance of the Roman Senate, Caesar brought his army across the Rubicon River headed towards Rome as he had ordered; but instead of returning alone, he brought with him his thirteenth legion – in complete defiance of the Senate’s orders.

Caesar’s response to their order to disband his army and return to Rome alone was “Alea iacta est” which means, “the die is cast.” This action was considered by the Senate to be a landmark defiance. Ever afterward, the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” became a metaphor that is synonymous with any action that once made, signifies a point of no return.

Prophetically speaking, this world which includes the nation of America has finally “crossed the Rubicon” with regard to events that are even now preparing the world for the final seven years of human history – events that will result in the culmination of the millennia-long Great Conflict of the Ages between Creator God and the rebel cherub, Lucifer, who became Satan, the Adversary – a conflict that has lasted from the time of Satan’s rebellion until this very moment.

All of the world’s nations (kingdoms) that will soon comprise the final form of the revived Roman Empire (Daniel’s “ten toes” of Daniel 9), are even now being maneuvered into place. The shuffling and arranging of what will eventually become the final ten kingdoms of both the Western and Eastern revived Roman Empire are in motion now. The nations that will comprise the Kings of the East, South, and North are also arranging themselves into their prophetic places. Sadly, as well, the destruction and fall of the United States as a global super power is almost complete. As hard as it is to face and accept, the United States of America is not even a casual player in end-time events.

It is my personal conviction that we are already well into a state of national collapse from which we cannot and will not return, but furthermore that the rapture of the Church will be THE event that will totally and finally decimate the nation of America, thus leaving Europe (both West and East) to rise to global prominence just as scripture shows that it will.

All prophecy is Israel-centric as Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Zechariah, and so many other yet-to-be-fulfilled OT prophesies make clear.

We are within mere months or weeks from an election; regardless of who “wins,” it will almost certainly result in complete chaos and full-blown anarchy in the streets of America. The final demise of America is at hand. It gives me absolutely NO pleasure to say these things except for the fact that Jesus Himself has already told us that these things (these set prophetic events) MUST happen before His return at the end of the coming Tribulation to set up His Millennial kingdom.

It is patently clear that God is giving the lost world a series of increasingly severe final warnings before His final judgment begins. To the Church, He is using these prophetic foreshocks to wake up a sleeping Church so that we will turn our hearts back towards Him alone, and to pry our hands off of the doorframe of this world that we, like tantrum-throwing toddlers not wanting to leave the playroom, have latched onto and to which we are grasping fiercely, so to speak.

Sadly, the majority of the Remnant Church, in America at least, continues to desire more to restore a dying nation that cannot and will not be reformed because it is completely wicked, than we desire to leave this judgment-bound place to be with our Savior in Glory. Sadly, the Remnant Church does not appear to know or want to admit that this world is not our home, neither is this nation our nation. We are citizens of Heaven. The body of Christ is an eternal nation whose home is not and never has been here in this temporal world, but rather our citizenship is in the New Jerusalem which Jesus has been preparing for us ever since His death, burial, resurrection and ascension back to “the Father’s house.”

Evil, debauchery, demonic wickedness of the most hellacious order, and utter vileness have completely metastasized throughout this fallen world in every single nation on every single continent. The world, including America herself, is eaten clean through with a demonic wickedness that grows deeper, more vile, and increasingly violent and God-hating by the minute. There can be no further reprieves, no further delays. We have crossed the Rubicon of God’s great mercy and forbearance.

Only judgment is left for this God-rejecting nation and world. Judgment and destruction MUST come so that Jesus can return to earth to restore and renovate this fallen world. He returns first in the air to catch away His body/bride via the resurrection/rapture, and afterwards follows the wrath of the Lamb which will have been poured out and God’s righteous judgment meted during Daniel’s 70th Week.

As His body, we who are the Remnant Church should be longing with all that is in us for His coming to deliver us, to take us to our real home, far more than we should be longing to repair and restore that which is already doomed and overripe for judgment.

The deepest cry of our hearts should not be to make America great again because that is not going to happen (even though we love our nation and have the right pray that IF the Lord permits it, we might remain a free nation until we are raptured).

As a nation and world on the brink of the Tribulation, we have already crossed the Rubicon – “Alea iacta est” – the die is cast. There will be no going back; the line of no return has already been crossed. We need to accept this truth, as difficult and heartbreaking as it may be to face. Instead of trying to revive that which God has foreordained that He is going to absolutely judge, the real longing of our hearts, the cry of our souls should be, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus”!

Beloveds, we are very near the culmination of the great battle of the ages that was begun when Lucifer, Son of the Morning, rebelled against his Creator, and the mystery of iniquity that would result in the fall of mankind was born.

Family of God, everything in human history – every conflict, every lie, every act of violence, every theft, every ounce of pride, every cold-hearted and self-loving attitude, every murder, every torture, every war – ALL have been the result of man following Satan’s lies in rebellion against Creator God.

This is the crux of the entire fallen, sin-wrecked, Hell-bound world. All that we are witnessing now and all that is yet to come is a result of the everlasting hatred and rebellion of Satan against Jehovah God.

We are living at the terminus of a revolt that was begun before man was created. Tragically for all mankind, Adam, the first man, deliberately chose rebellion, following the lies of the Serpent.

Satan has hated those of every generation who have, by God’s grace through faith, believed and called upon God the Son for salvation. Satan has ALWAYS hated those who love God. He has persecuted God’s people in every generation from Adam’s until this very second.

We are the final generation. It should come as no surprise to us as this millennia-old conflict reaches its apex that we who are called by Jesus’s name, washed by His blood, rescued from eternal death by His blood – like those believers before us – we too in these last closing moments of the great Conflict of the Ages will be mocked, abused, hated, and some murdered and martyred for His namesake.

Satan has killed billions throughout the ages. And those he has not killed he has, to one degree or another, persecuted in every way allowed to him.

We know that we are at the very end just before the rapture; therefore, we also know that Satan is pulling out all the stops because he knows his time is short. We know that all their masks are off now. We see Satan’s agenda clearly among those who are deniers of God’s truth and those who are openly hostile to God and His Word. We see all the masks of civility and common decency being ripped away. Behind the facade, the grinning, gibbering, insane hatred of Satan and his demons is being clearly revealed.

Believers in the first-century church saw the evil behind the political mask of Rome as millions died a martyr’s death because Satan hates God. They saw the demonic hypocrisy of the religious Jews who also hated and denied their own Messiah and persecuted and killed ALL, both Jews and Gentiles, who did believe on Jesus as Messiah and Savior. Millions upon millions saw the glowering hatred behind the false and demonically deceptive piety of the Roman Catholic Church. Those who believed in Jesus alone endured untold horrors at the hands of the Church of Rome in the numerous waves of persecution throughout the centuries, including the spawned-in-Hell savagery of the Inquisition.

In every pagan culture that has ever existed, those who have chosen to follow God have faced Satan’s wrath and fury. And although Satan tried his best and although billions have lost their earthly lives, they loved the name above all names, Jesus their Savior, more than they loved their own lives. Billions have been killed by Satan and his minions; nonetheless, God ALWAYS has a remnant that Satan cannot touch, cannot silence, cannot eradicate, and cannot defeat. God ALWAYS has a remnant.

In our GENERATION, WE are that Remnant. Depending on when Jesus calls us up, not all of us as part of the body/bride of Christ may make it to be alive at that glorious moment, but we WILL “ALL BE CHANGED.” Dead or alive, we of this final generation will partake of this glorious event, either by being resurrected from our graves or caught up in the air.

Before God delivers His Remnant Church and His final judgment begins, we believers in these end times find ourselves face-to-face with the blazing, demonic hatred of the last generation of reprobate, God-hating, demon-possessed humanity who are rabidly crying out for the one who will be the Antichrist. These demon-possessed God-haters whose ranks even now are swelling to fill the earth are rabidly working to destroy every vestige of freedom and every mention of God, salvation, and the name of Jesus across the earth. We are witnessing their ranks swelling and their hatred and demonic fury rising. They hate us because they hate God. They despise us because they despise the name of the crucified and risen Savior Jesus Christ.

They hate His Word as well because it is through the prophetic Word – that has already been fulfilled, is being fulfilled at this moment, and that is shortly to be fulfilled – that Satan and all his horde know their doom is at hand. Prophecy coming will consummate the eternal defeat of Satan.

These modern reprobates, just like all who have hated and rejected God’s so great salvation, hate the eternal triune God-head. They hate the incarnate Christ. They especially hate His infallible, inerrant, and immutable Word because it records their doom. And finally, they hate each of us who are believers called by His name and cleansed by His blood. They hate us because they hate Him.

We are so very close to the deliverance of the Church, both dead and alive, via the resurrection/rapture. Family of God, it is now that we MUST gird ourselves in our spiritual armor. We must wield the Sword of the Spirit effectively as we “earnestly contend for THE faith” (Jude 3). Any moment now, we will hear the sound of God’s celestial trumpet. Any moment now, we will hear King Jesus’s shout for us to “Come up hither!”

Family, we are in the last seconds of the last minutes of the last days just before the Remnant Church is caught up to meet our Lord in the air! Don’t get discouraged now! No matter how bad things get here, keep sharing the gospel! Keep warning of coming judgment even if no one is listening. They may not listen now, but after we are gone, many WILL heed and remember. Finally, keep looking up!

Brethren, we KNOW Satan’s tactics; they have never changed. He uses lies, deceit, discord, depression, fear, envy, pride, and intimidation. Nevertheless, regardless of his wiles and tactics, we KNOW that he is an ALREADY DEFEATED FOE. To the eternally saved and sealed believer in Christ, Satan and all his fallen angelic and demonic horde are nothing more than paper tigers who can do NOTHING to eternally saved and eternally kept believers. Oh, he may kill our body IF the Lord allows him that power, but he can NEVER have our blood-bought, eternally sealed spirits because WE BELONG TO THE ONE WHO BOUGHT US WITH HIS BLOOD AND SEALED US BY HIS RESURRECTION!

Family of God, don’t be afraid of what’s going on around us, no matter how bad it gets or how close it comes to our door. Don’t cower in fear; stand in faith! We must pick up our Bibles, bow our heads and hearts before the Lord, and then stand firm upon His Word.

As we make our final charge – as we give our final push – let us contend for the faith until the moment that we either draw our last breath, or until our vile bodies are changed from corruptible to incorruptible, from mortal to immortal “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.”

Our deliverance is just barely beyond our line of vision. As the late Jack Kelly used to say, “We can almost hear the footsteps of the Messiah!” Be encouraged, be bold, be wise, be faithful, and be EXCITED because the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23) draws (very) near!

“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also” (John 15:18-20, KJV).

alice.joan.childs@gmail.com