Pluralism and its inroads in Remnant thinking

Applicational Commentary

Isaiah 47

Isaiah lived in a time when Assyria was the main power and Babylon was on and off rebelling against them. We live in a time when the USA and allies or First World powers paradigm is in power and Developing countries are lining up Third-World countries in their entourage against the USA and its allies on many levels, not only politically or ideologically but also economically.

In Isaiah 47, the Lord revealed to Isaiah the Fall of Babylon. In Daniel 11:45 the Lord showed Daniel that in the end time, shortly before the Time of Trouble, the empire of the world will come to his end and no one for him. The prophets were given visions of the fall of nations and sometimes the fall of cities like Sodom and Gomorrah, Niniveh (Nahum 3), Babylon, Samaria, Jerusalem, Tyre, Jerusalem (again), Rome, Vatican, Vatican (again). The Fall of Cities genre in the prophets are not just historical, the scenes are loaded with attachments and far reaching strings. The Fall of Cities had correspondences with the fall of Lucifer from Heaven.

One other point that is important is that God used in prophecy the female to represent religion in Isaiah 47:1 He is addressing the religion of Babylon and Chaldea as the virgin daughter of Babylon and the daughter of the Chaldeans (v. 1).

The description by Isaiah of the Fall of Babylon in this chapter almost convinced us that it was directed to the events of 539-538 BCE but the strong connections that this prophecy has with Revelation 18 (see vv. 8; 9; 15) simply means that John in Revelation was shown the same event as yet unfulfilled. In John’s prophecy he saw “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great”. In the vision of John at the end of Revelation 17:18 the woman [religion] “whom you saw is the great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth”. This vision of John is in the end-time. The statue of liberty in New York has a great female carrying a torch of liberty with her and this female was a gift of France to the USA for its role in the setting up of secularism and the “wounding” of the Holy Roman Empire and transforming it into a multiple constitution. Whether this is in mind for us to make connections, is not clear. All we know is that the USA is the world leader at the moment, taking the role that Ur, Ashur, Babylon, Persipolis, Athens, Rome, Vatican took in history.

The characteristics of this female in Isaiah 47 are mixed. It is one of the unfortunate things of every false religion is that it is mixed with falsehood and truth. It deceives and confuses or confuse while it deceives. It opts for pluralism and insist that exclusive claims that Christianity is the only right religion is arrogant and bigotting. As one article in the Anglican Theological Review of 2015 explains, Karl Barth and Paul Tillich were Christian scholars who tried to present the graceful side of Christian religion that embraces all religions as paths to eternal life. In fact, they apparently insisted that Jesus saved all humans. To please the pluralistic activists the author of the article fans out his ideas to do the same. Baalism in the days of Elijah was operating with the same tenets of thinking. The Adventist Today is a journal in Adventism whos’ journalists are operating with the same modus operandi as this writer of the Anglican Theological Review. The remnant is confronted from outside and inside with the same ideas that prevailed in the days of Elijah and present in Baalism. Exclusivism is out of fashion and victimized and ostracized as wrong. Forced inclusivism and forced integrationism leads to religious persecution in countries like Myamar where reports indicate that Buddhism is persecuting Islam according to an online scientific report by two USA investigators that appeared recently.

These countries cannot be called “tender and delicate”. The USA however, can be called in our times “tender and delicate”. Delicate because it honors anyone to have any religion and the freedom of choice is placed above any other ideology. The prophet Daniel saw the last days of the Image of Nebuchadnezar as having feet of clay and iron. One would rather call the USA and its allies clay and whoever else iron. Totalitarianism cannot be called clay since it persecute the right of the individual over that of the state on all levels even religion and then force its citizens to “worship” the state and its members and view them as the “heaven” today. Despite the good qualities that the USA has above totalitarian and quasi-totalitarian examples across the globe, the country change religion to be a harlot, mirroring the country, despite these good characteristics of the country. The Time of Trouble predicted to start when “he shall come to his end and no one for him” is following this event of the Fall of the Empire of the End in Daniel 11:45 since the next verse is the Time of Trouble like there never was in Daniel 12:1. Does it mean that the iron nations and states came into the swing of things and the clay nations were the ones coming to an end? It is still future.

The woman of Isaiah 47 was called “tender and delicate” (v. 1e); also a queen of kingdoms (v. 5d). The USA has many allies and friends. The Roman Catholic Church is to play increasing a strong role in the USA state of affairs as it is predicted by numerous books on the topic. Revelation 13 says that the second beast, which is interpreted by historicists updated as the USA, will create an image for the first beast or the Vatican and is this image the United Nations charter and operations? Is the UN going to become a glove for the Catholic Church? Is this what Revelation 13 means?

Think about Jesus meeting Roman officers, they did not come to say, Master, you know what, I am a strong believer of Jupiter and goes to his temple many times, so since you and Jupiter are the same then you can heal my daughter. It is because of his faith in Christ that his daughter was healed. There is a heap of difference here. Elijah was very strong against pluralism not because it is a doctored account of a piece of propaganda by a temple power against the government but because it was the truth. It really happened and there is no space for God in pluralism. He is a jealous God.

The harlot aspect of this woman is important since Isaiah 47 says that she profaned the heritage of God (v. 6b). The heritage of God is His faithful remnant. They are truthful to His word and mirror Him the best. But the Catholic influence in the USA will lead to a watering down of God’s truths on all levels and organizations like the UN History of Religions is part of this process. Ecumenism and the World Council of Churches are all tools in the hands of the Catholic Church. Is she the harlot that is addressed here? There is probably no period in the history of the USA that the fanning out of Media propaganda of Media secularism and its tentacles are making such strong inroads in the remnant as our day. The reactionists in the political world of Islam react against this with violence as agenda. The reactionists in the remnant of God react to this aspect of the USA with determination to evangelize more and preach more and teach more. The free choice is to remain honored regardless of the objection.

Isaiah 47 says the harlot is a sensual one (v. 8a). The inroads of the harlot in the remnant movement of God is by using the senses: eyes (video games); ears (music); taste; feeling; and smell to make slippery decisions that leads to abandonment of God’s standards. The harlot fans out that normativism and the claim to keep the law is useless and that relativism is better and that everyone has the right to like his own religion or god or things in life. No-one, even God is permitted to prescribe for them what is right or wrong. They flourish on feelings for decisions and inform themselves with blogs and twitters and smses. This is the digimodernism we are living in.

But the harlot of Isaiah 47 is also wicked (v. 10a). All the cities that fell in the Bible were wicked and that is why they fell. There is no exception and as Daniel 11:45 says: He will come to his end and no one for him. What makes us think that all Empires of the world fell, and that this statement can never be the USA? Is the USA transforming currently? Are they taking hands with the enemy in an attempt to remain in power? Did Justinian not do the same during the fall of Rome shortly before and after 538 A.D? He killed the enemy in North Africa to maintain his power, he tried to please the barbarians in order to keep his position, and when the fall of the official titles came in 538 A.D. and the soldiers were only going to excuse churches from their wrath, Justinian became a theologian and minted on his coins in that year that he is no longer a soldier but a theologian. He and his harlot wife Theodora started building churches left right and center and in one church in Europe one can see him as portrayed as Christ in 540 and his wife as Mary with the virgins around her. The Hagia Sophia in Constantinopel was inaugurated in 537 A. D. the year before the fall of the official titles of Rome and one can see the face of Christ and on the left Constantine and on the right Justinian. The empire fell and the Holy Roman Empire originated and prove of this was the height of the Catholic Church in the life of Gregory the Great who steered events between 583-605 A.D. The characteristics of Rome was to adapt quickly to the environment for its own survival and through migrationism of a large scale, it came to its end. We are living again in a period of mass migrationism like there was not for a long time in history. The demography of World-powers are changed by this migrationism and so is the transformation that they do within the existing power system. Out of kindness they adapt to help but become themselves adapted and sink.  

The harlot of Isaiah 47 deceived herself claiming everlasting status quo (v. 7a): queen forever; never a widow (v. 8e); never lose children (v. 8f); incomparable “there is no one besides me” (v. 10e). The Catholic Church do view themselves in these terms as one can see in many documents and data at www.vatican.va. The problem for the remnant is that there are members in the church who claim these aspects for their country. Nationalism and flagworship and patriotism close their eyes to their own inabilities and clash with the Word of God. They feel that they are the epic center of civilization and that all other nations are subjected to their style and fashion and if not, the other nations are minor and not important. What is important is to see that the culture is a Pandora Box of built-in good and evil and that unless the faithful with the Word of God as their guide, selects eclectically from culture the good separated from the bad, the remnant will be confusing values of the country’s culture as “eternal” and substitute God’s eternal Truth with “eternal self-perception” in cultural ideas, like woman ordination and the gay ministry. Each country’s culture must be approached not with romanticism but with revisionism.

 The condition of the punishment is absolutely decided “for which you cannot atone” (v. 11d). There is no mercy for this entity as opposed to human beings who can convert into an improved future relationship with God. And here lies the key: every time a prophet is describing the Fall of a City genre in prophecy like Tyre or Babylon, the issue is that its essence is the egocentric sin of Lucifer in Heaven and the Rebellion in Heaven Event is rehearsed. One can hear the rebellious heart and thoughts of Lucifer echoing in Babylon. Apostate religion is in prophecy a harlot and in vv. 2-3 God is describing that He will expose her evil “your shame also will be exposed” (v. 3b). The judgment is not by Cyrus or Gobryas or Persia or human instruments. Cyrus and Gobryas came together to Babylon to attack it in 539 BCE but Gobryas entered first. He was the Median king then called Darius the Mede and ruled only two years and then Cyrus took over in 538 BCE. The judgment is from God. God even told Jeremiah the exact time when the punishment would happen, exactly 70 years later. Precise. God has time-tables and He keeps them. When God was angry with His remnant He gave them over into the hands of apostate religion in Babylon and “you [harlot religion of Babylon] did not show mercy to them” (v. 6d). The Redeemer of spiritual Israel or the Remnant is “the Lord of hosts . . the Holy One of [spiritual] Israel” (v. 4). The prophecy is about the Remnant of God and His relationship to them and the sin of apostate religion in Babylon to touch the apple of His eye. Apostate religion said a couple of things: “I am and there is no one besides me” (v. 8d; 10e). Are many people saying this in any apostate religion in the USA including the Catholic Church? She was involved in wickedness (v. 10a). How would one say the Catholic Church is involved with wickedness? Are Jesuits still programming agendas like they did during the Middle Ages?  Her [apostate religious] wisdom and understanding “they have deluded you” (v. 10c). We know that the understanding of the role of Mary in the Catholic Church has led them to substitute the Holy Spirit for Mary so that functions that can only be done by the Holy Spirit is now done by Mary, like intercession. She was involved with “many sorceries” (v. 9d-e). When one listens to the testimony of Walther Veith years ago one understands this verse better. She oppressed the geronti (v. 6e). When the pluralist activists in the remnant in their sheep-clothes introduce their skew doctrines and thinking, then it is the geronti that suffers the most. They can see the problem but are no longer in power to do or say anything. She had no mercy on the remnant of God (v. 6d). Again, one tend to think that the Adventists who are pro-Catholic in doctrines and thinking due to the culture of the First World Empire Today or Today’s Babylon, will be punished more than the Catholic who are just catholic. Punishment is according to what one knows and rejects after knowing it. God pronounce the judgment or punishment of this apostate Babylon: “two things shall come on you suddenly in one day” the loss of children and widowhood (v. 9a-b). Because the Latter Rain of the Holy Spirit outpouring is going to happen which is a final call before the Second Coming many are going to respond to this call and leave the other churches including the Catholic Church. In Isaiah 54:1d and 2a-3a God describes that the Latter Rain will bring people in so that those coming in are more than the married one and the addition group to the longtime remnant means they must enlarge their tent since “your seed shall possess the nations”. What goes out comes in. In Isaiah 47 it is said that evil will come on her (v. 11a). There are going to be plaques. Disaster will fall on her (v. 11c); destruction about which you do not know will come on you suddenly (v. 11e-f). The destruction is with fire since “fire burns them” (v. 14b); “they cannot deliver themselves from the power of the flame” (v. 14c); “there is none to save you” (v. 15d). God also has room to mock the harlot by saying she should ask astrologers, stargazers, those who predict by the new moons to “stand up and save you from what will come upon you” (v. 13). Lucifer who became Satan will burn in the fire of Hell just before eternity starts. It is the last historical event and the extermination of evil. None can save him. He cannot find atonement for his deeds any longer then since He crucified God on the cross and revealed His true character.

Dear God

Grant that in this symbol of the harlot of apostasy of religion the apostate religion of spiritual Babylon of the world will not find support from us. Claim us as part of Your remnant and be for us the Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts and Holy One of spiritual Israel. Amen.