Higher Criticism entails many lies that try to say the Bible is full of contradictions, lies, and myths. But they are in error in a horrible way. One lie we will deal with is that Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible. Listen, if Moses didn’t write the first five books of the Bible we are in serious trouble; the Old and New Testament are both in Jeopardy. Jesus said Moses wrote of him in John 5: 45, 47 which says “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me for he wrote of me. But if you believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” The really sad thing about this fact is that many Bible toting Christians don’t believe Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible also known as the Pentateuch. By holding this view they are running into the error of denying the Lord that brought them (2Pet. 2;1). Most Scholars believe that the Pentateuch were a compilation of works by numerous writers over a long period of time. Most Universities teach that the Pentateuch is a work consisting of four literary strands: The Yahwist view, The Elohist view, The Deuteronimist view and the Priestly view. The Yahwist time frame they say existed about 950 B.C. The Elohist time frame exhisted in the Northern kingdom about 750 B.C. The Deuteronimist time frame existed in the Southern kingdom about 650 B.C. or later. And the Priestly view comes from the period after the fall of Judah in 586 B.C. The people that hold these views agree that the modern Hebrew Bible reached its current form through these processes by the time of Ezra about 400 B.C. The inventor or should I say the one who popularized this theory was Julius Wellhausen, a nineteenth century German Scholar. But along with the growth of this theory was the development of Darwinism, and some other nineteenth century Philosophers such as Fichte, Hegel, Treitschke, Nietzsche, and Richard Wagner just to name a few. If we understand the environment that this theory was popularized in we can see the situation that was happening in Europe. Nineteenth Century Europe was a time of unparalleled searching and researching to the degeneration of a people. You are looking at the time frame of a civilization of people who had fallen away from the Biblical principles of scripture and embraced a flood of eastern Philosophies that carried Germany and Europe into the abyss of Adolf Hitler. These theories and Philosophies helped the downward spiral of a continent into the beginning of the history of the great falling away.
2Thess. 2: 3, says “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;” The day Paul was speaking of is the second coming of Jesus Christ. There must be a falling away first before anything else can happen.The falling away was a preceding event before the rise of the antichrist, it ushers him in. This is what happened to Germany: they heard the word of God, even having it as a preserving source through the church, but as a nation they could no longer endure sound doctrine. And they began to fall away from the truth’s they understood in the Bible. Their transgression filled to a capacity, and then the beast entered in. The book the ’Hitler Myth’ states the following “The pseudo-religious coloring is worthy of note… the secularization of Christian belief in salvation-particularly among German Protestants, whose attachment to the Church was dwindling, but who were traditionally brought up to accept authority, particularly that of the state, the leadership idea being propagated by the volkish-nationalist right offered a kind of secularization of belief in salvation. And within the Protestant Church itself, already being rent by theological divisions amounting to a ’crisis of faith’, (a wing developed) in the which volkish political ideas were blended in an unholy mixture with Christian revivalism. The propagation of such sentiments further helped prepare the ground among ordinary Protestants for the receptivity to notions of ’political salvation’ which a ‘genuine’ national leader could offer, and which would bring with it Christian renewal.” This was saying that the church had fallen away and mingled itself with a political type of salvation. A falling away happens not with an announcement to people, but in individual lives, who have put aside the truth of the gospel, for another “gospel”, which Paul the Apostle said, is not another but a perversion. This new ’gospel’ has hints of the true, but a shift has taken place in the message where it’s not about Christ, but the magnification of self. Conway says in his book, the “Nazi Persecution of the Churches” that “Millions of men and women throughout Europe had likewise come to realize that for them the doctrines of the Christian faith no longer held meaning or truth. The confident optimism of Nineteenth-century liberal theology withered and died before the stark reality of the Flanders trenches. Christian values no longer seemed tenable in the bloody circumstances of total war. The churches all-too-willing support of nationalist war-time aims, on both the warring sides, appeared uncommonly like hypocrisy.” The reason being is because, many churches were presenting a false message, therefore offering a false hope and as a result many became deluded. Conway continues to say “the inability of the Christian Churches to explain why the religion of the Prince of Peace was powerless to prevent the catastrophic disasters of 1914-18, finally destroyed all Christian belief in the hearts of a generation that had watched its comrades die so tragically in the belief that they were defending their country’s Christian Heritage. Nevertheless, a longing for some faith to replace the disillusionments of the post-war world was in everyone’s heart, and when Adolf Hitler appeared in Germany with a program and a promise calculated to appeal to the defeated and discouraged, and offering what appeared to be a vital secular faith in place of the discredited creeds of Christianity, the time was ripe for its acceptance… the ready acceptance of Nazi ideology as a substitute for Christian beliefs in the years following Germanys defeat in 1918, was due, not to Hitler’s persuasiveness as a political philosopher; but to a profound revolution in the spiritual life of the country. Nazism filled a vacuum in the lives of countless Germans, by offering, in emotional and semi-religious language, both a dynamic political creed and a plausible explanation of Germany’s post-war predicament. National Socialism was to become far more than an alternative political party offering a programme suited to the times: it was, in Hitler’s own words, ‘a form of conversion, a new faith’”.
The word antichrist was first used in 1John 2: 18, 19, which says “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us: for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” This lets us know, that the antichrist comes out of the “church”. He tries to act like the Messiah, but he is not the Messiah. Like Jesus came out of the tribe of Judah, Hitler came out of Catholicism, which is spiritual Judah. John the Baptizer prepares the way for Jesus, the true Messiah: and Joseph Goebbels becomes Hitler’s prophet, and magnifies Hitler. The ‘anti’ in “Anti-Christ” means, instead or because of, a substitution, and in place of. 2Thess. 2: 4, tells us what the Antichrist would do when he was revealed, “Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” The word temple in this verse is ‘Naos’, which Paul used to describe the temple of the body. But the antichrist body was not God’s temple, but Satan’s through Apollyon. (This again is not speaking of the Jewish Temple, because Gods temple are bodies of people). A representation of himself is sat down in the assembly of believers. Dan. 11: 31, says “And arms (the S.S., Hitler’s bodyguard) shall stand on his part and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the Abomination that maketh desolate.” The Abomination is the book “Mein Kampf”. In this book he opposeth and exalts himself above all that is called God. Fest states that this book was an “unspeakable foulness… behind a veil of randomly acquired learning runs an arrogant conviction of the omnipotence of the individual will, the idea of an ‘everlasting, brutal struggle’, a primitive belief in force sneeringly convinced of its superiority over all ‘religions of pity’ and exulting at the practice of running amuck as the ultimate meaning of history such is the repetitive, paltry content of an ideology presented in inflated and semi-educated verbiage through almost eight hundred pages.” Dan. 11: 36, says “And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.” Rev. 17: 11, says “And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” Dan. 7: 8, 25, says “I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things… And he shall speak great words against the most high, and shall wear out the saints of the most high, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time (3 ½ years). Adolf Hitler is the only one that fulfills this description of the little horn of Daniel. He desecrated the Christian assemblies of Europe through his book Mein Kampf, which means ‘My Struggle’. The Bible says arms on his part shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, Dan. 11: 31. In William Shirer’s book “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, he explains that the book Mein Kampf was highly regarded. He also gives us a description of a few of its Thirty point article which convey the essential parts, beginning with point fourteen, “ The National Church declares that to it, and therefore to the German nation, it has been decided that the Fuhrer’s Mein Kampf is the greatest of all documents. It… not only contains the greatest but it embodies the purest and truest ethics for the present and future life of our nation. 18. The National Church will clear away from its altars all crucifixes, Bibles and pictures of saints. 19. on the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf (to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book) and to the left of the altar a sword. 30. On the day of its foundation, the Christian Cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals and Chapels… and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika.”
Daniel 9: 27, says “And he shall confirm the covenant (some translations say ‘a covenant’) with many for one week:…” The Catholic Church made a Concordat (or a covenant) with Hitler not to harm the denominational Schools and churches. Soon after the signing of the Concordat, the Nazis began to violate their agreement. J.S. Conway says that “In Wurttemberg and Saxony the Ministry of Education tried to introduce an inter-denominational form of religious instruction, which omitted the Old Testament a flagrant violation of the provisions of the Concordat as well as of the wishes of both Churches (Catholic and Protestant)…” In 1936, plans were prepared that new ‘model Schools’ were to take the place of the denominational Schools. In August of 1939, all denominational Schools were abolished by the Nazi party, under the Leadership of Alfred Rosenberg. The Desolation had been set up. The Bible was taken out of the Schools of learning, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf replaced it. The Daily sacrifice of the Preaching and Teaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was substituted with teachings from Mein Kampf. This was the abomination that caused desolation. The abomination of desolation in the Old Testament was when the daily meat offering was taken away by Antiochus IV, and substituted with an unclean swine on the altar of the Jews. A statue of Zeus was also erected in the temple representing Antiochus IV. In this New Testament era Hitler like his predecessor, removed the daily Preaching and Teaching of the Gospel of Christ, and placed his book in the hands of students. The Nazis intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany. The German schools from first grade through the universities, were quickly Nazified. Textbooks were rewritten, and curriculums were changed, Mein Kampf, was made official organ of the educators “our infallible pedagogical guiding star”. There are those who would say that the church can’t go through the Tribulation, but the Bible says in Acts 14: 22, “… that we through much Tribulation shall enter the kingdom of God.” If you were to properly rightly divide the word of truth you would fine that the church goes through the tribulation, and that Jesus comes after the tribulation period. In John 16: 33 Jesus says “… in the world ye shall have Tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
Anthony D. Booker
The GATHERING Place 