Bible Reading: Daniel 8:13-27
Key Verse: Verse 23 – “And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.”
Key Words: a king of fierce countenance
Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for twenty-five terror-filled years. It is said that Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible were novices compared to the terror of Stalin. He was probably the greatest tyrant the world has ever seen. He exterminated more people in wars, and planned more famines, purges, mass deportations, and campaigns of terror than any other leader who ever lived. He was anti-Europe, anti-America, and anti-Semitic.
It is estimated that Stalin killed ten million peasants in his drive to collect the farms of Russia. An additional ten million Ukranians vanished, and another five million died of famine. Stalin’s secret police shot and hanged whole villages. Millions were forced into slave labor camps to build roads and canals, cut down forests, open mines, and gather harvests.
Stalin killed at least a million of his own Communist Party, and he purged the leading generals and thirty thousand officers from the leadership of the Russian Army. All Red Army officers who had gained experience in the Spanish Civil War were brought home and shot.
Stalin banished his wife’s sister to a concentration camp for writing her memoirs. During and after World War II he supervised the disappearance of some three million Jews in Russia, the Baltic States, and Soviet-controlled Poland. At the time of Stalin’s death, he was planning the systematic extermination of every Jew in the Soviet Union.
But Stalin’s terror will pale in comparison to that of the anti-Christ.
The anti-Christ is known as the desolator (Daniel 9:27), that man of sin (II Thessalonians 2:2-3), the vile person (Daniel 11:21), the Assyrian [ruthless one] (Isaiah 10:5-12), the bloody and deceitful man (Psalm 5:6)…just to name a few of his personality traits.
But, glory be to God, before the anti-Christ comes on the scene, we as believers will be raptured into glory. Rather than be in the presence of the anti-Christ, we will be in the presence of the true and living Christ! Indeed, it is wonderful to be a Christian
What to do:
✞ Pray daily for God’s power to witness to others.
✞ Stay lovingly strong in these last days.
Are you Saved? | Get These Free Devotions Everyday By Email
