The great Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky once said, “Good players skate to where the puck is. Great players skate to where it will be.” This is not only insight for anticipating competition but also wisdom for understanding history and God’s unfolding plan for mankind.
So where is “the puck heading?”
The answer points toward a single brewing conflict over Jerusalem (i.e., Zion), the climax of history commonly known as the Battle of Armageddon. A world leader, inspired by demonic power and called the Antichrist, will arise. Like the Roman emperors of old, he will claim to be “God,” (2 Thess. 2:4) and will lead “all the nations” (Zech. 14:2) against Jerusalem to fight against the reign of the coming Davidic King, called the Christ, which means Anointed One, His throne name.
Jerusalem: The Epicenter of the Final Conflict
Psalm chapter 2 foretells the rebellion of the nations against “the Lord and His Anointed (Messiah),” and yet God declares, “I have installed My King on Zion, My holy hill.” Romans 11:26–27, “The Deliverer will come out of Zion … this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.” Isaiah 62:1–2 adds that Zion will shine as a praise on the earth, a beacon to the nations.
Again, the focal point will be Jerusalem, where the nations will gather against the city, yet their real objective is to oppose the Messiah, the Davidic King.
Living Backward from the End
Seeing this end, where the puck will be, provides us with needed discernment and wisdom on how to live today and be proactive rather than reactive.
It is the kind of wisdom that comes from understanding the end first and then reasoning backward from it. This is no different, in principle, than what Aristotle described as teleology: understanding a thing by its ultimate purpose, or how mathematicians solve problems by working backward from the solution.
The question we need to ask is…
What are the micro-currents of “anti-Christ influences” that are at work in our generation to deceive a generation that will lead to the final battle that will culminate in judgment in Jerusalem?
Recognizing the Anti-Christ Micro-Currents
A good place to start in answering this is found in Revelation 12. This chapter provides extraordinary behind the scenes insight that reveals that Satan will unleash an intensified assault against public enemy number one, Israel, as well public enemy number two - anyone who follows the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world.
This tells you all you need to know to discern the relentless spiritual, strategic, and geopolitical warfare defining our age.
Therefore, does it surprise us that today the most persecuted group on the planet are Christians who follow the King of the Jews, who is the King of Kings, the Savior of the world? Does it surprise us that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are skyrocketing?
Now you can better understand why we’re witnessing an acceleration in attacking Zionism, that comes from the term Zion (צִיּוֹן, Tziyon), which originally refers to a hill in Jerusalem, Mount Zion, where King David established his city around 1000 BCE.
The Hijacking of Zionism
In fact, the very meaning of Zionism is being hijacked. It has increasingly become a slur that was originally based on an intentional, blatant lie first launched during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and its allies deliberately weaponized language.
They falsely branded Zionism - the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel - as racist and colonialist in order to delegitimize the Jewish state..
This campaign culminated in the notorious 1975 UN Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism, a resolution that was repealed in 1991. But the lie today thrives on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and X, seducing a whole generation and reminding us of the old adage, “A lie travels the world seven times before the truth ever gets its shoes on.”
The Assault on Truth Itself
In addition, we’re witnessing the micro-currents of “anti-Christ influences” seen in the suppression and distortion of truth, and by that I mean both fact-based truth and revelation-based truth. For example, fact-based truth is that two plus two equals four. Revelation-based truth is, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1)
Scripture warns that there will be a generation that “… refused to love the truth and so be saved, and therefore God sends them a strong delusion” (2 Thess. 2:10–11).
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