One of the reasons I encourage my followers to own a copy of Martyr’s Mirror and familiarize themselves with the history of Christian persecution is to de-mystify the way that tribulation happens. We need to be learning from the past.
We’re not even close to finished with our thought experiment of how the Tribulation could play out in the near future. We’ve just begun laying out the hypothetical scenario. As we progress, I keep asking for comments, so I appreciate those who give feedback. The “church” (assembly) is meant to be stronger than any individual, balancing and improving the discussion. “As iron sharpens iron, so a person sharpens his friend.” (Proverbs 27:17)
This is a comment from a friend and long-time follower of mine:
Everything sounds good up until the turning on Christianity as a whole. It seems too 'abrupt' in a sense. It reads as a forced screenwriting script for pushing tribulation onto Christianity.
Of course this is a fair point. So let’s first ask: how natural is the destruction of Christianity going to be when the time comes? Will it make sense and happen logically, or will it seem “abrupt” or “forced” to those who are paying attention—as if being scripted? In my book Maybe Everyone is Wrong I describe how a lot of prophecy can be fulfilled without people noticing it, so it’s possible that even the Tribulation will come and go in such a seamless way.
What about Jesus?
One of the first places we should look for an example is Jesus Christ himself. Did his persecution seem forced or natural?
In his childhood we have King Herod the Great commanding all the children under a certain age to be killed in the Bethlehem region (Matthew 2:16).1 But because Jesus escaped, he returned after Herod’s death as an adult and traveled Judea without being recognized. He preached about prophetic fulfillment, gathering a large following, and intriguing even the rulers of the Jews with his interpretations. He was educated and spoke boldly about scripture. It wasn’t until he started pointing out the hypocrisy of the elites and predicting the destruction of the Temple that they really turned on him. He stirred up quite a controversy within Jerusalem, but that was about it. As they sought to capture him for questioning, he escaped several times and turned even more people against them. In the end, he was betrayed by Judas and allowed himself to be captured. He used it as an opportunity to testify in front of the governors of the land. He was abandoned by his disciples, mocked by soldiers, and presumed to be a failed Messiah by the people. Only a few of the eyewitnesses of his crucifixion noticed that he was special, and there was no turmoil after his death.
In the big picture of the world at the time, this was a tiny footnote. The Roman Empire’s wars and conquests were a million times more important to any natural observer. But in God’s prophecy, this was the center of not only the world, but the cosmos and all of Creation. So we see a dichotomy between what the world thinks is important, and what God thinks is important.
Was the murder of Jesus forced, or natural? It was quite forced. Based on what Jesus was doing, and what the status quo was, you’d never guess it would turn out that way using rational analysis. It was all driven by paranoid projection and guilt, as the ruling class began losing control over the masses and turning to God’s Word with new understanding. It should have been celebrated, but instead it was the impetus for a conspiracy to slander, frame, and murder him as the scapegoat of their own crimes. The world did not turn against Jesus, the Sanhedrin and those afraid of them did. His resurrection and subsequent appearances to people (including Paul) is what really began to turn the tide, spreading it everywhere. The persecution itself was a sloppy, illogical, and deceptive blunder. In fact, the “forced” nature of Jesus’ tribulation is a major reason why so many people recognized him as innocent, and converted!
What about the martyrs?
In the Martyr’s Mirror, we read about the Catholic Inquisition against Bible-believers throughout European history. What do they all have in common? Were these campaigns of terror organic and logical, or “forced” and sloppy, with a clearly pre-meditated agenda behind them? They were all sloppy. They were all forced. They were marked for death by the ruling class (bishops) and executed in cold, heartless manner by people who had no clue what they were doing.
These saints were innocent, peaceful, charitable, and open to discussion. Many of them (including women) suffered the most vile, obscene tortures imaginable, while their children were stolen and forced into Catholic homes. Those who were merely drowned were lucky.
Some of these people were brought in front of Dominican friars or Jesuit priests for interrogation, while in other places, major communities of Christians were ambushed by professional armies and massacred in their homes, without even the pretense of a trial. The population at large did not hate them, and the politics of the day did not revolve around them. In fact, it was the popularity of their Gospel that made them such a threat to the ruling class (the Catholic hierarchy), which is why they moved against them before they could become politically threatening.
Nothing was more “forced” than the papal declaration of a Crusade against a peaceful civilian population, but this didn’t stop the slaughter from happening. They were dragged from their homes in the middle of the day, with townsfolk watching, and brought to town squares to be burned alive. Thousands were imprisoned in dungeons and tortured for the amusement of the priests and mercenaries. The women were raped and beheaded. But students are not taught about this in history classes. We hear about the French Revolution, but not the Albigensian Crusade before it. The systematic genocide of an innocent Christian population can almost be forgotten.2
Death as the spotlight
I will point the reader back to a 2022 post I wrote on how the social engineers are using emotional excitement and irrationality to provoke the population into staying easily manipulated, and how death is the ultimate spotlight, which they can shine on anything they like:
The biggest danger that was facing the elite was irrelevance. As the free and open Internet was booming, and mainstream media was spiraling downward, they were losing clout, investment, and—most importantly—control of the narrative. By embracing the “bad guy” status and provoking everyone into obsessing over their next move, they have people right where they want them. Formerly irrelevant losers like Bill Gates only need to smirk to send millions of paranoid people into panic.
If you want control, it is better to be feared and hated than ignored. The problem today is, nobody can ignore death. This is why death will become the god of the New Age, where truth is buried alongside billions.
While Christians are being killed, it’s almost certain that the “spotlight” of deaths will be shining on other victims, who are considered to be “the real victims”. We’ll talk more about this in subsequent thought experiment posts, because there are a lot of possibilities.
For now, let’s briefly imagine that independent media notices what’s going on and points out that Bible-believers are being persecuted by Theosophical Kabbalists, the Catholic Church, and the United Nations. So what? Modern elites don’t care about being “good guys” anymore. They want to trigger a collapse. They want to sacrifice everything. They enjoy being caught stealing elections and then blaming those who protest their crimes as terrorists. On some level, they even enjoy the Jefferey Epstein list being in the wind, because it accelerates the plan. They invite riots and civil unrest. They derail trains and then light the toxic chemicals on fire—after making a movie about exactly that in the exact same town! They are pouring gasoline on the fire of revolution. In today’s political environment, having the lowest approval numbers is the mark of an approved conspirator. Evil is rewarded.
It’s not hard to see how a widespread and highly visible persecution of Christians in a (deliberately) sloppy smear campaign would be beneficial to the corrupt establishment. We live in a world where the President of the USA’s son planted his unsecured laptop in a repair shop so that he could be caught red-handed doing crack and screwing underage prostitutes, while supposedly running a Ukraine conglomerate, and a daughter who planted her diary in a former home so that journalists could discover that she was forced to take incestuous pedophile showers with her father, the President. And yet the official narrative is that Joe Biden is the most voted-for president in American history, the front-runner of the DNC, and the face of progressive politics. Everything is “forced” today. They like it that way.
Conclusion
Would it be wiser for social engineers to make the Tribulation seem like a logical byproduct of the time, or a planned campaign by the “Deep State” or even “the Jews”? We know that the forged Albert Pike letter blames the Freemasons for what will happen. The Protocols of Zion claim that the Freemasons are puppets of the Jewish Illuminati, who control everything. Who will take the blame when it happens? False flags are everywhere, and they’ll only get worse.
Does Satan really need to distract people from the injustice of the Tribulation, or would it be better to shine a spotlight on it? What happens if some corrupt sect is “caught” killing Christians under flimsy pretexts, in conjunction with global authorities? If history is any indication, they’ll simply bask in the fear generated by it, telling themselves they’ve won a fight against God; then they’ll continue to enjoy their corrupt power while underestimating the long-term price they’ll have to pay. In this case, the price would presumably be the cataclysms of Revelation, the return of Christ, and the Millennial Kingdom.
We must continue to explore the avenues of the thought experiment. One of the main objectives of my work is to give prophecy “room to breathe”. I do not want to squeeze it into a tiny convenient narrative. But it’s hard to open that can of worms without letting it spill everywhere. We will walk through possibilities and hypothetical questions one step at a time, trying to keep an open mind and encourage discussion. The psychology of the endgame is not straightforward. Collapse and death has a distorting effect on how people think. What I hope to establish with this post is that we have historic precedent to assume that the Tribulation will be a sloppily-executed fiasco, not a “perfect crime”.
The Bible does not record that this slaughter actually happened, just that Herod gave the order in a fit of rage. At the time, Herod was deeply unpopular, and not even recognized as the rightful king by most of the population. It’s possible that his own soldiers only partially executed the order.
Just as they did not expect the death of Jesus to inspire a revolution, they did not expect the massacre of these Christians to plant the seeds of even greater evangelism. They expected the public to turn against the victims, but as Rene Girard explained, Jesus broke the scapegoat system. That’s why they bury the history, and why they now try even harder to frame Christians as being the persecutors, not the victims.
This is a refreshing read. I realize that I always tend to lend too much credence to mere evil men.
1. They're not smart.
2. They're barely organized (they cope with using words like 'united' and 'organization').
3. They work off emotion and violate the Law of Shortsightedness (robert green).
4. They barely like each other (evidented by the beast warring with itself).
5. They are losers who flex the only authority given from above: Confusion and paranoia. Woe to them!
Take comfort christians, my brothers and sisters! We truly have nothing to fear. All they can flex is pain. Above the physical pain they can give to us, what do they have? If your faith is set in stone with Christ, then recognize that they have nothing.
I await those many possibilities that you have brewing. This is fun to do and as you stated "As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend," (Proverbs 27:17).