Surely the ultimate reason why Jews are hated by certain people is that Jesus is coming back soon to live amongst His Jewish brothers and sisters again.
Therefore antisemitism involves a rejection of Jesus and of Christians, too. The prince of this world, the accuser, murderer and deceiver called Satan, knows this is true even though many people don’t. Satan has access to the lives of people who worship false gods and he can cause big trouble through them, as he is doing in Israel right now. He is making a vicious last stand to try to prevent Jesus’ return.
The thousand–year reign of Jesus Christ seems very attractive. People with Jesus’ authority will help each other with godly, neighbourly love to live well. There will be peaceful order with accepted personal boundaries and victory over difficulties. The activity of Satan will be stopped.
People with Jesus’ authority will help each other with godly, neighbourly love to live well ....The activity of Satan will be stopped.
But there are people who balk at this, those unwilling to believe it could ever be genuine. Such people work with Satan to disrupt, undermine, and mock and kill the people of God.
Many of us will have experienced violent reactions against the proclamation of the love and goodness of God. There is something in the majority of unredeemed people which cannot really take that, not only because their experience of life hitherto has never afforded any hope beyond mundane responses of fallen human nature, but also because of the increasingly common worship of false gods, which surprisingly often occurs in secrecy.
Sophisticated paganism
As the influence of Christendom wanes, what is right with God is increasingly threatened. Everything is being shaken. The current fashion for wokery politicises and weaponises critical theory by making damaging accusations against people who are not obviously compliant with widely promulgated secular attitudes towards diversity (particularly diversity of sexual attraction) and climate change, the environment, epidemics, economics, justice, education, family, and so on.
Furthermore, there is conflict between political ideologies seeking to exploit the world’s resources; and ideologies seeking to reduce such exploitation by ‘greening’. Governments not only manage their people but also endeavour to control them by subtle means, and there would even appear to be an agenda deviously to reduce the number of people on earth.
Governments not only manage their people but also endeavour to control them by subtle means
The majority of people are susceptible to manipulation by being stupefied through media and are easily deluded. But those in whom Holy Spirit lives can discern truth. Holy Spirit will enable them to see that people are being deceived en masse, manipulated by influential secular psychologists, academics and politicians who earnestly believe that human beings must provide natural human solutions for natural problems.
Yet the people of God know that the Almighty is in charge, and that He knows all things (1 John 3:20). He is working His purposes out and we can put our hope in Him. Just as foretold in Scripture, there will be tribulation before Jesus returns, and this looks like the beginning.
Mental health
People’s mental health suffers because widespread delusion causes basic insecurity in their very being. Secular treatment, therapy and counselling attempt only to promote adaptation in secular terms to the secular world. Drugs sedate complex reactions to circumstances, psychotherapy avoids the counsel of God, and counselling tries to change the way a person thinks by manipulating their cognition using logical secular reasoning. None of this brings full healing and peace to the heart.
There is a world of difference between training the brain and opening the heart. Instruction with words alone commonly fails to bring healing. Paul tells us, “…the letter kills but the Spirit gives life.” We deal with what we hear according to our spiritual allegiance.
People’s mental health suffers because widespread delusion causes basic insecurity in their very being.
In order for the wisdom of God to enter the heart and bring healing to body, mind and soul, the heart must first open to Him (Prov 2:1-15). Upon really meeting the person of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, the heart is usually moved to repentance. That is because Jesus is God incarnate who gave His life to redeem us and who rose from the dead, now sitting at the right hand of God to intercede for us.
He produces repentance because although He is Almighty God, Creator of the universe, He actually became a person like us and knows all about us, more than we are conscious of ourselves, and nevertheless, He still loves us (Heb 2:11). You will only open your heart if you trust that the one who hears will respond with love and healing, rather than with condemnation. When you meet with God like this His words and His Spirit work together (2 Sam 23:2, Prov 1:23, Isa 59:21) as the Spirit of God declares, “I am the Lord who heals you.” (Ex 15:26.)
Opening your heart with a human being you sufficiently trust can sometimes be a beginning for laying everything that comes into your heart before God. Christians willing and able to withstand the details of what other human beings get up to can, in this way, help God to heal their minds, and this will help to heal their bodies, too (Rom 8:11).
Secularism derives from the fallen, deadened human spirit, and God is the judge of those who fail to relate to Him through Jesus and repent.
The big mistake is to believe that there is some good in everyone. The words of God in Psalm 14:3 which say, “There is no one who does good – not even one” and also God’s words in 1 John 1:8 which say, “If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” are both commonly ignored. Secularism derives from the fallen, deadened human spirit (Gen 2:17) and God is the judge of those who fail to relate to Him through Jesus and repent.
End times
It is time for Christians to allow God to equip them for the end of this age. The foundation of our preparation must surely be to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and Love your neighbour as yourself” (Luke 10:27). This involves personal relationship, listening to God, knowing and being known, loving and allowing one’s self to be loved, warts and all, before it gets too late.
This way we shall be able to care for each other against the hard times and opposition that are already coming upon us. Others may then find it attractive to come in and join us for Jesus’ wedding feast.
John Gordon was formerly a GP, a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst. He is now a licensed minister in The Order of Jacob’s Well.
