They Went Out From Us Because They Are 'Not Like Us'
What happens when false prophets reveal themselves? What if these antichrists are in fact revealing a Biblical reality?
Children, it is the last hour; and just as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But their departure made it clear that none of them belonged to us.
Yes, it’s been more than a week.
Yes, I’m still thinking about it.
No, I don’t care about Taylor Swift or her boyfriend losing.
Like you and millions of other Americans, I clung lightly to any optimism for this year’s Big Game™ knowing full well it was a) existentially meaningless, b) possibly rigged in advance, and c) likely to feature the usual anti-Christian halftime fare.
Turns out I’m not a prophet. But apparently Kendrick Lamar is?
While Kendrick’s “historic” performance was hardly the ritual that has occupied so many other halftime shows, it was the now-routine performance of “Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" - which the NAACP likens to the “black national anthem” - that, for whatever reason, caught my attention.
I’m old enough to remember all the way back to 2018 when the MSM repeatedly told us the National Anthem was “racist.” But an anthem exclusively celebrating one racial group? Now that’s diverse, inclusive AND equitable!
Clearly, I’m not the only one with that response.
Podcaster Tim Pool - hardly what you would call a political reactionary - called the song a “black supremacist national anthem.” Armstrong Williams, co-owner of The Baltimore Sun, noted that we don’t play other nation’s anthems during our sporting events - why this one?
Others pointed out how playing the song promoted segregation rather than unity. Some even mentioned the anthem is played first before the "Star Spangled Banner,” almost given a place of primacy.
Years before the “Star Spangled Banner” became the official national anthem of the U.S. in 1931, the NAACP adopted “Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing” in 1919. Less than a century later, the California NAACP called for a new anthem in 2017, calling certain lyrics “racist” and “anti-black.”
But it got me thinking: what exactly is a “black national anthem”? Wouldn’t a “black national anthem” inherently necessitate a “black nation”?
This became all the more ludicrous with the cameo by Samuel “L.” Jackson as Uncle Sam. You know, “I Want You” Uncle Sam. The iconic American recruiting icon. Replace by the dude known for profanity and racial slurs.
Throwing on a blue stovepipe hat and red white and blue outfit doesn’t make Sam Jackson “Uncle Sam” any more than thinking someone is an American solely because they’re born here.
Sure, with all the gratuitous red, white, and blue imagery, this was the least satanically inspired halftime show in probably a decade, but like Blaze TV’s Jason Whitlock so insightfully noted, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t subversive.
Here’s just a snippet of the lyrics to “Lift Ev'ry Voice”:
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.
Wait. What? Native land?
Which one? America? Africa? Both?
And if this is referring to what sounds like a foreign, or “native”, land, how can this possibly be the - or even “an” - American national anthem?
What’s going here?
‘A Minor’ so-called ‘prophet’
Then there’s Mr. Pulitzer Prize himself, a rapper who gave us, by most measures, a relatively tame performance when it comes to blasphemy.
Or at least that’s what I initially thought.
Now I know what you’re thinking - it’ just a reference to a line from “Not Like Us” exposing Aubrey Drake Graham and his penchant for young girls - and on its face, you’d be correct.
Except when you view it in context.
Kendrick was wearing an lowercase or small “a” medallion. The same artist is who hailed repeatedly as a “prophet” by the media. Many (thought not all) have speculated this pendant was a reference to his “Not Like Us” line , “Tryin’ to strike a chord / and it’s probably A-minor” - a double entendre, referencing the A minor chord while implying that Drake, who Kendrick has called a "certified pedophile,” has inappropriate relationships with minors.
His co-performer at the Super Bowl SZA insists Kendrick Lamar is a “prophet”.
Likewise the National Catholic Reporter.
As does the Chicago Sun-Times.
A-minor + “prophet” = A minor prophet.
You know, along the lines of Joel. Jonas. Amos. Hosea.1
And now, apparently, Kendrick Lamar.
This same Kendrick Lamar who wore a diamond-encrusted crown of thorns and a white garment for his closeout appearance at a 2022 festival in Glastonbury, England.
The same Kendrick Lamar who, in that very same show, performed his song “Savior” while dripping blood from his bejeweled crown, chanting, “They judge you, they judge Christ. Godspeed for women’s rights!”
“A minor prophet” who mocks the Passion of the Christ our Savior.
Got it.
The Scriptures very clearly equate false prophets with false teachers and outlines the fate that awaits them.
But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.
I’m told repeatedly by the cultural zeitgeist parrots that Kendrick is a “Christian” who wears his faith on his sleeve and boldly proclaims truth in all his songs.
I don’t know about all that.
But I’m sure any number of those corny Christian rappers that nobody listens to anymore would love to don the crown of thorns and drip the precious blood of Christ in exchange for an audience anywhere near what the Super Bowl halftime show receives, roughly half the size of the U.S. population.
Either way, the folks who shelled out hundreds and some even thousands of dollars to see the Super Bowl weren’t very enthused about Kendrick’s performance. Some reviews slammed the halftime show as the “worst-ever.”
But truth be told, that’s only because it wasn’t meant for them.
See, this wasn’t the normal shuckin’ and jivin’ routine. This wasn’t another lukewarm pop concert sprinkled with a few satanic undertones.
This was cultural revolution dictated from the top down.
The NFL didn’t choose Kendrick Lamar as the first solo hip-hop halftime performer because he would inspire Americans to greater things. This wasn’t even an attempt to unify the country following Trump’s overwhelming election victory.
This was curated by none other than billionaire woke peddler and Obama bestie himself Shawn Carter, aka “Jay Z.” And just like Obama, this show was driven by subtle jabs at the American dream rather than roundhouse kicks. It was “Christian” in air quotes. It was the mockery of the American logos veiled in a Star Spangled facade.
In fact, Jay Z and his DEI hire, shouldered much of the blame for the show’s lackluster reception.
You may recall it was Carter and his Covid Revolution-era hire Jesse Collins who curated a message not from the streets, but from the boardrooms of dashed DEI dreamers hoping to inculcate the masses through Inspire Change, the NFL’s activism campaign focused on the oddly race-specific areas of education, economic advancement, police-community relations and criminal justice reform.
In 2019, Roc Nation, Jay-Z’s entertainment and sports company, signed a deal to consult on the show, and no doubt he played a key role in the selection of Kendrick Lamar.
Now call me crazy (or conspiratorial) but didn’t Carter, aka “Mr. No Church in the Wild”, make his bones mocking Christ as well? Referring to himself as “H.O.V.A.”, a shortened version of Jehovah, the Anglicized name of the God of Israel? The same person who once rapped “Jesus can’t save you / Life starts when the Church ends”?
The very same dude who gave the equally blasphemous Kanye West a career?
That guy is the one elevating Kendrick Lamar onto the biggest stage in sports?
When does this stop being a “crazy coincidence”? When do see things as they are?
‘In place of’ rather than ‘against’
For some time now, I’ve been challenged to reconsider some long-held convictions I’ve had about this Biblical notion of “antichrist” - what it means, what it doesn’t. Who it is, who it definitely isn’t.
Who it might be.
One of the biggest notions I’ve struggled with is that this word “antichrist” - or antichristos in the original language of the New Testament. This word is comprised of the Greek words ἀντί (anti, meaning "against" or "in place of") and Χριστός (Christos, meaning "Christ" or "Anointed One").
Interestingly, there is no direct Hebrew equivalent for antichristos , according to Strong’s Concordance. That is to say, there is no Old Testament figure that corresponds to one who comes “against or in place of” the Anointed of Yahweh.2
This notion of antichrist is a strictly New Covenant reference point.
In dispensational circles, it’s widely believed this antichristos figure will speak blasphemy against the God of Jacob and will present himself as God Himself.
The Apostle John in particular has a lot to say on the subject.
Who is the liar, if it is not the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son.
For many deceivers have gone out into the world, refusing to confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.
…Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and which is already in the world at this time.
Students of the Bible will recall that it was the for very charge of blasphemy that Jesus was crucified by the Jews. Rome had no criminal charge of blasphemy; it wasn’t until the reign of Byzantine emperor Justinian I (527–565 AD) that the death penalty was decreed for blasphemy.3
Blasphemy, of course, is a counterfeit claim against God. “He is” this, “He is not” that. It posits a fake deity, one that never existed in the first place, and certainly one that cannot save.
This recurring theme of counterfeits ran through the entire Super Bowl halftime show.
Counterfeit Uncle Sam.
Counterfeit National Anthem.
Counterfeit Messiah.
All of these themes exploded into the mainstream with the Obama-era proposition of a generic sameness inherent in our nation. That words like “men” and “women” are meaningless signifiers of an imperceptible and irrelevant distinction and that it doesn’t matter how you were born - what matters is how you feel like you were born.
Feelings over facts.
Imagination over truth.
This is the war on reality. It is a war waged by the spirit of antichrist at a time of great upheaval, as the world reels to and fro as warfare - physical and otherwise - is relentlessly waged on this plane.
The counterfeit, the fake, the stand-in - these, we’re told, are the real thing.
And the real, the true, the unmatched singularity of purpose, the source of eternal life that is found only in Christ Jesus - this, we’re told, is merely a figment of our brainwashed and hate-filled minds, one that must be fully extinguished before the world can “evolve” into its next, or new, age.
Just as John wrote over 2,000 years ago, they went out from us as the Body because they are not like those of us who are in Him, the One in Whom there is no darkness or shadow of turning.4
In Hollywood, they hire stand-ins to give movie stars a break while standing around and doing nothing on a movie or TV set. It’s like a cheap replacement until the crew is ready for the real thing.
For Super Bowl LIX, the “black national anthem” was a stand-in for the Star Spangled Banner.
Samuel L. Jackson stood in for Uncle Sam.
Kendrick Lamar stood in for Christ Jesus.
The world over knows what an American looks like. They wonder at us everywhere we venture. Asia, Africa, the Middle East - wherever we go we stand out. Separated by our visible attributes.
We’re seen not simply as foreigners, but something wholly different. Special? Maybe. Maybe not. But different, surely.
But here in actual America, the ruling elite has convinced us that we must play along with the prima facie falsehood that all people who live here are “Americans” through and through, whether their family has generations on this soil or they just got off the last hijacked cargo plane from Jalalabad.
If that’s true, then Samuel Jackson, symbolizing the unchained and liberated slave from Django Unchained, is the most authentic Uncle Sam we’ve ever had.
But if it’s not true, if simply wearing the right clothes or sharing the same culture doesn’t define us - what does? Why are we afraid to acknowledge it? Who exactly cajoles us into quiet submission?
What if there really is a counterfeit nation within our nation?
What if there really is a counterfeit “Church” in the Body of Christ?
What if there really is a counterfeit people who falsely claim to be God’s elect?
Are the people of God ready to publicly engage these questions? To confront them with the Word? To stand fast in what we know to be true?
The antichrist fervor sweeping our land will not result in any overturning of the Christian order until the Lord says the time is at hand.
And not a moment sooner.
Act accordingly.
http://www.thebibleforstudents.com/minor-prophets/lesson-3-chart
https://biblehub.com/dictionary/a/antichrist.htm
https://www.britannica.com/topic/blasphemy