The Senior Pastor of Paradigm Shift Ministry, Pastor Jide Makinde, spoke with Sunday Oguntola on why Christians need to play closer attention to biblical evidence to have better understanding of events surrounding the end time. Excerpts:
Your new book is titled HitGalut. What does that mean?
HitGalut is the Hebrew translation of Revelation. People use Apocalypses, which is the Greek word for Revelation. Instead of saying Apocalypses, I used HitGalut. People have been asking me what it means and I have been doing a lot of explaining.
Why did you choose to write on the end-time?
Well, for me, it was not just about the desire to write a book. It was a message I got from God. I feel the Lord has sent me and I consider it a privilege. Usually, things like these should be coming from the establishments. But I believe the Lord singled me out to do it.
In 1965, I was in Primary Three and I had this unusual encounter. My father was in the Railway and we were in Offa. I had this dream as an eight-year-old. I saw a big well with water and fire was coming out of it.
I was shocked and intrigued. An uncle of us who was with us and had returned to Lagos said he wanted to go inside the well and I was begging him not to. He went into the well with the fire and water eventually. I went to the quarters of our Igbo neighbours at the railway and saw a miniature of the water and fire in the well. I didn’t understand what it was about. I couldn’t go to my dad because we were not close. This happened just before the civil war.
In 1967, all my Igbo friends relocated back to the East without exemption and many of them did not return. In 1969, my father was transferred to Kaduna but I stayed back in Offa to finish my secondary school.
In 1969, I went on holiday to Kaduna and my uncle I saw going inside the fire came to our house in full regalia of a Lieutenant. The Lord said to me that what I saw was my uncle going to the civil war. All those things prepared me for the revelations.
By 1984, I became born again and because of my interest, I was drawn to research. I saw some missing links in some of the messages of our leaders. I then invested in books and materials on end time. The more I read, the more I saw missing links. It wasn’t as if something was wrong with the messages but the chronology didn’t fall into place.
In 2005, I had a dream, 50 years after the first one. I saw chaos and everybody was on his/her own. I was feeling guilty and crying that God told me about this thing and I didn’t tell people. When I woke up, I knew I must start sharing what the Lord was showing me.
What is the main thrust of the book?
If you look at the chronology of end-time, you find a lot of churches talking about the rapture. The Catholic Church, Lutheran Church, Anglican Church, Methodist Church and Orthodox Church do not believe in the rapture. They believe Jesus Christ is coming back but not through the rapture. They don’t believe it at all. They believe we are already in the millennium.
The confusion is will the rapture happen before or after the Great Tribulations? My argument is the Bible is clear the Great Tribulations is before the rapture. The popular notion is that the rapture comes after the Great Tribulations. It is not possible because that is putting the horse before the cart.
The first seal is communism, which started in Russia and spread to China. Almost sixty percent came under communism. After that, there was Marxism. We then had economic imperialism, which was when the coalition of people came after Hitler. From this time, we would have an empire of communism with capitalism, which is a marriage of strange fellows.
In 1991, the same people metamorphosed into another thing. The Bible calls it the spirit of Death and Hell. That is the era where the world is now. It is good to know where we are to understand the globe and where we are going. That is the age we’d have terrorism, modern epidemics, economic depression and recession. Everything will really go down here and escalate.
Since we had 9/11, the world has not remained the same again. Everything is escalating. The terrorists are becoming more creative in the world. People think that it is a religious problem but it is not. If it is religious, religion would have cured it. But it is the spirit of Death and Hell that is controlling things now.
What we are contending is more dangerous than what happened in the first and second World Wars. As we are dealing with one here, another epidemic will be springing up everywhere. All of these will escalate to the point that the whole world will be looking up to a savior, which will make the anti-Christ to arise.
Before the rapture?
Yes, he will arise from the USA with immense political power purportedly to save the world. American fundamentalists believe the Pope is the anti-Christ but the bible did not say so. The anti-Christ will come from a little horn. The anti-Christ will come from the USA. Something is going to happen in America that will affect the whole world.
In 1930, there was the Great American Depression that affected the whole world. In the same vein, a political or social event in America will trigger a global crisis that will give rise to the anti-Christ. He will just plant his proxies all over the world to rule on his behalf.
Netherlands has suggested that any nation that does not remit its bailouts will be under a Protectorate. If you cannot pay back, they will appoint a receivership over that nation. All these debts that we are plying up will allow the anti-Christ to take over nations of the world because they won’t be able to pay back.
That is when the issue of the mark of the anti-Christ will come. The BVN is already an indication of what will happen. You cannot function without an identity. The Church is waiting for the rapture but the Great Tribulations will come before the rapture.
But this is a new concept
Well, it is not new. It has always been there in the bible but the Christian establishment didn’t follow the sequence of events slated for the end-time. You see the belief that the rapture will come before the Great Tribulations came from the fundamentalists of America also known as Pre-troops.
The Church in Nigeria came from them. Once they got it wrong, we’d get it wrong too. I will appeal to our church leaders to go back to the bible and reconsider things. Unless we get things right, we wouldn’t be able to interpret what is happening around us.
So, contrary to established belief, Christians will participate in the Great Tribulations?
Yes, we will. All the early churches went through the Great Tribulations. Even Jesus went through it. All the fathers of faith went through it. The church went to sleep a King offered official protection. The revival started with the American church but where are they too? Jesus said the rapture will take place immediately after the Great Tribulations.
After the rapture, there will be the seventh seal, which is when God Himself will start punishing mankind. A lot of people misunderstand it for the Great Tribulations but it is not. A lot of Christians would have gone to collect the marks of the beast but God will seek want to save them. Extra-terrestrials beings will be the ones to preach them to persuade men.
You mean those who have collected the marks might still be saved?
Yes because God does not want anyone to be condemned. He will offer everyone a second chance again to accept Christ. By then, the headquarters of the anti-Christ will be in Jerusalem and there will be the battle of the Armageddon.
Are you saying the rapture is not the second coming of Christ?
It is not and I will tell you what it is about. The purpose of the rapture is what Americans always do when they want to take over a place. They will announce for all their citizens to come to the airport for evacuation. Once they have done that, the missiles and air bombardment comes in. Once they have destroyed the capability of the enemies to respond, the soldiers come in for mop-up operations.
Christ will do the same thing to evacuate His people not as permanent residents but as special refugees in heaven. They will be there for three-and-half years in heaven. They will go up there and come down when the anti-Christ has been destroyed for the millennial reign.
I had to go through a paradigm shift to absorb this revelation. My major appeal is that our leaders should unlearn everything and go through the bible again. If the Great Tribulations should happen, the danger is what happened during the holocausts will happen again.
The leaders didn’t teach them they will go through other tribulations. They thought they were done with it in AD 70. They didn’t know there was another Nero that will come in the form of Hitler. They events of holocaust turned them to anti-god. They didn’t expect that God will watch them go through genocide.
Our leaders should prepare people because they might become anti-god if they experience the Great Tribulations.
