All of God's rulers are subjected to many years of suffering. The purpose of the suffering is that they may learn obedience to the Father and come to know Him. It is only after they have been called, chosen, and proven faithful that they are fit to rule with God.

Those who are planning to rule today are not living as part of the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord but according to their own soulish impulses—although they speak and act in Jesus' name.

The Kingdom of God shall be established on the earth by force, as the Lord Jesus descends with His army to crush all resistance. The nations of the earth will attempt to resist God's anointed, but they shall be destroyed. This is what the Scriptures teach, both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The concept of Christians setting up the Kingdom of God by means of their faith, prior to Christ's appearing, is an Antichrist idea. It is not proceeding from the Lord but from the False Prophet.

The true Christian of today is patiently bearing his cross after Christ. He is clothing himself with the armor of righteousness, preparing himself to stand in the day of evil. He is not seeking to be wealthy. He is seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, realizing that all material goods necessary for his survival and well being will be provided by the Lord.

The spirit that is teaching Christians they are to be wealthy, to be leaders of the world, to be without pain, to live in pleasure, is not of God. It is the False Prophet spoken of in the Book of Revelation.

The true saints are hearing the voice of the Bridegroom. As they laboriously place one foot after the other in the pressured way that leads to eternal life, the Spirit of God is warning them of the Antichrist spirit, of the False Prophet, of Babylon, and of Laodicea. The day will come when the preachers who are seducing God's people, inviting them to wealth and positions of power, who are of the synagogue of Satan, will come and worship God at the feet of His true saints.

He who has an ear to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches, let him acknowledge that the love of money is the root of all evil and that God's true followers are always accounted as sheep for the slaughter. This world is not their home. Their kingdom is not of this world.

When we listen to the Lord today, does He invite us to go forth and set up His Kingdom now? He does not! He warns us to set our own house in order because the spirit of deception is in the land. Judgment and persecution are coming. There will be no rapture to deliver the believers from the seductions and persecutions of Antichrist or from the great tribulation.

The end of the age is upon us. Those who overcome Satan, the world, and their own lusts and self-seeking, will sit with Christ in His throne. Those who seek to live in pleasure, even though the pleasure is obtained in the name of the Lord Jesus, will be snared by Antichrist, by the False Prophet, and by Babylon (man-directed Christianity), and will finally be brought to unbearable remorse and torment.

To be continued.