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The book True Christianity is still under development and has not yet been published. However, the Introduction and first nine chapters are included in their entirety here.
This seven-book series of novels about the end-times reflects the teachings in this website and are available, as described below. The first book is entitled "The Beginning of the End." The second book is "The End of the Beginning" while the third book is entitled, "The Beginning of Revival." and the fourth book is "The End of Peace" These are all available as trade-size paperbacks and electronic books for Kindle and Nook.
The last three books in the series are only available as ebooks. Book five is entitled "The Beginning of Judgment" while the sixth book is "The End of Judgment" and the seventh and final book is entitled "The Beginning of Forever"
The books are available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com. Search on "beginning end jacobsen" to pull the first book right up. The Kindle versions cost only $2.99 each.
This multi-book series is an epic saga that follows a diverse set of characters through the seven-year Tribulation into the Millennium. Pastors, prayer warriors, CIA agents, Illuminati leaders, the Anti-Christ and the False Prophet vie against each other and God in this compelling drama that presents a strong Biblical case for a pre-wrath rapture that occurs after the midpoint of the Tribulation.
This first book covers the pre-Tribulation period that Jesus calls the “beginning of sorrows” up to the emergence of the Anti-Christ and False Prophet. As the world is flung into great travail, a small group of Christians leads the way in coping with increased persecution midst the virtual collapse of the social order. By properly interpreting prophetic Scriptures, they have prepared well-stocked hideaways from which to offer sustenance and salvation to a troubled world.
Meanwhile, two pastors from different ends of the Christian spectrum collaborate to convert an Illuminati leader and Deputy Director of the CIA into a mole within the shadowy leadership of the demonically coordinated New World Order. Satan’s strategies are exposed while God’s end-time power begins to work through those who are called to be the light of truth within the gross darkness that covers the earth.
The foreword and the first three chapters can be sampled below:
This story and its characters are fictional, but based on many truths. The characters are strictly fictional and do not represent any actual persons, myself included.
Many direct and indirect Scriptures are employed. Where not specifically noted, the Scriptural references are included in the Appendix.
Statements about Freemasonry, the Illuminati and the New World Order are based on extensive research which can be accessed on my Lion of Judah website at www.lofj.com under the End-Times tab. Some readers will question the truth of demonology as portrayed in this book. However, I have directly experienced quite similar situations in my pastoral counseling career.
Warning: Some readers have experienced physical and emotional reactions when reading details about demons, Freemasonry and the Illuminati. If this should happen to you, seek out pastors or ministries who know how to handle these situations. You can search for them on the Internet.
As for my personal background, which many readers like to know, I am a former Director of Management Science at two Fortune 100 corporations, an executive in the software industry and then President of Meals-on-Wheels in Prescott Arizona. I have a BS in Engineering and an MS in Management Science. I became a pastor in 2001, and was the founder of the Gospel of Grace Food & Clothing Bank and the Lion of Judah ministries in Prescott Valley, Arizona. I also served as the Prayer Coordinator for Yavapai County in Arizona for several years. I was reared a Lutheran, became a pastor in a Pentecostal church, and now consider myself to be non-denominational.
Pastor Walter Alfredson stared gloomily into his boiling hot mocha latte. The swirling steam reminded him of his own life swirling out of control. Church falling apart. Marriage falling apart. Him falling apart. Round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows. Well, maybe the Man upstairs knows, but Pastor “Wally” sure didn’t.
Of course, it could be worse. He could now be sitting at a bar instead of in a coffee shop, drowning his sorrows in the booze that called out to him from its apparently temporary grave. He thought he’d buried those demons years ago, and yet here they were tantalizing him again.
Ah, yes, demons. Oh to once again be blissfully unaware of their pernicious presence. Yes, that’s where this downward slide began, he concluded, still staring into the clouds of steam that rose like ghosts out of the paper cup still too hot to pick up.
Out of habit, he glanced around the coffee shop to see if he knew anyone, or if anyone was watching him. Being the pastor of one of the largest, most successful churches in Alexandria, Virginia made him someone that was known by many people that he didn’t know himself. That seemingly holy face on billboards and in TV sermons. The wise face in newspaper articles. The angelic face in local magazines that touted his community activism and popularity. The mask of someone living a lie.
That’s why the coffee shop where he found himself sitting was out in Annandale just off the I-495 Beltway, well east of Old Town Alexandria. He was hopeful no one would recognize his pretty face out here, especially with the two-day stubble and ultra-casual clothes. But still he worried about his image, because the church and his marriage were built upon that image.
He supposed that he had once believed in this image as well. But that came from trying to be someone he wasn’t, someone others had always wanted him to be, right from the very beginning. Little Wally, so smart, so good-looking, so righteous.
But now that others had begun to see the changes in him, things were rapidly spiraling downward. Or maybe it was upward? God’s will? He didn’t know which it was or even whether he was already past the tipping point. Could he pull it all back together again? That no longer seemed to be an option. He just couldn’t do it, couldn’t go on with the masquerade.
Not since Jim Simons had entered his life with his basketful of problems. Not since this Associate Deputy Director of the CIA had shared his secrets. Not since the door to the future had been opened up to him.
Pastor Wally shivered and took a sip of the now merely scalding hot beverage. He glanced at his watch as the warmth spread throughout his body, but somehow bypassed his trembling soul. Time to go. An important Board meeting, with himself the hot topic of the day. Another sip. Another shiver. Almost irresistible urges for alcoholic bliss.
With a heavy sigh, he picked up the cup and trod out to his car, shoulders slumped over in defeat.
Frank Ernest, Board Chairman of the Metro DC Lutheran Church, droned on and on about the decreasing attendance on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings and the associated decline in revenue. Pastor Wally sat slumped in his excessively padded wing chair in the elaborately ornate conference room barely paying attention. The other Board members stole fleeting glances at their usually upbeat minister and then quickly looked away.
Frank, on the other hand, scowled at Pastor Wally as he expressed his displeasure with the numbers that meant everything to him. As the President of a leading financial services firm and an elected councilman in Alexandria, Frank was used to people paying attention and obeisance to him. He had come to the meeting already annoyed at the state of churchly things, but now he was growing exceedingly irritated at this pastor who didn’t seem to understand that he served only at the discretion of the Board.
Of course, Frank felt that he was the Board, and therefore Pastor Wally should be quaking in his shoes instead of looking like he could care less about what Frank was saying. Were Wally his business employee, Frank would already have chewed him up and spit him out. Now, for the sake of religious decorum, Frank supposed, he was giving the pastor some slack.
When he’d finished drumming on about the numbers and showing his Power Point graphs, Frank concluded by addressing Pastor Wally directly. “So, pastor, what do you make of all this? What’s going wrong?”
Frank knew damn well what was wrong. The pastor was falling apart at the seams and it was, perhaps, time to consider bringing in a new godly gunslinger. But first, he’d get the pastor to hang himself so it wouldn’t seem as though it was a personal vendetta by the rightly feared Board Chairman.
Pastor Wally sat up and hunched over the table, staring at his folded hands. His first thought was how much better it would have been to be seated at a bar, sipping a scotch and water and chatting with the bartender rather than answering to a man who represented all that was wrong nowadays with the church world. The business of church now trumped its spiritual mission.
“Uhm… well, Frank…. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on,” Pastor Wally finally said. Make that a scotch straight up, he thought.
“That’s been quite clear,” Frank snapped back. “Ever since you started your healing and deliverance ministry, you’ve become distracted and disinterested in the more important matters of the church. And you yourself have changed, almost as though you’ve become demon-possessed, as if that were even possible.”
Frank stared contemptuously at Pastor Wally. Demons were a figment of people’s overactive imaginations. It was too easy to blame one’s problems on an outside force and abdicate personal responsibility. Oh sure, there were people who were mentally ill, schizophrenics and the like, who thought they saw and heard things. But that’s all it was. Mental illness. Chemical imbalances. To believe otherwise was ludicrous.
When Pastor Wally didn’t respond, Frank continued, “You know that we the Board never authorized you to start that ministry in the first place. You were supposed to be counseling them, not chasing ghosts. And now we’ve got all sorts of strange characters coming to the church. People are talking, and it’s not good. They are waiting for us to do something. That’s why I called this emergency Board meeting. We have to nip this in the bud.”
Several other Board members nodded their heads in agreement, the ones who kowtowed to Frank. The others looked away in discomfort. Pastor Wally tried to catch the eye of his friend, Larry Little, who had been his staunchest backer for many years. But Larry appeared to be studying the charts and graphs with great concentration. Wally’s upwardly mobile Associate Pastor, Gerald Logan, glowed with anticipation.
Pastor Wally thought about those “strange” people he’d been counseling. They were the ones who were actually making progress. The others, all members of his congregation, simply came and listened to his wise Christian counsel, and then went about their lives stuck in the same old ruts. He would look out at them as he delivered his sermons, seeing them in their church masks acting as though everything were just hunky-dory in their lives, whereas Wally knew they were still distressed, depressed and oppressed.
In desperation, the pastor had undertaken a study of Biblically-based counseling techniques. The seminary had done very little to prepare him to deal with the real world problems his congregation faced. After reading many books, prowling the Internet and taking a few courses that the church knew nothing about, Wally realized that the Bible did indeed have much to say about helping people to be healed. Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually as well.
And demons, or “unclean spirits,” were a very real part of the mix. Jesus cast them out of people and they were healed of all sorts of mental and physical conditions. Mentioned 83 times in the New King James version, it was clear that they were part of the fabric of spiritual life. Knowing how to deal with them had proven to be an important part of people regaining control over their lives. Demonic possession was rare, but demonic influence was pervasive.
“Pastor Alfredson, are you with us?” Frank demanded to know, piercing Wally’s reverie like a sharp stick punctures an overly inflated balloon.
“Uh, sorry, I was thinking,” the pastor finally replied.
Frank harrumphed. “And what conclusions did you come to?”
“I’m sorry, Frank, but I cannot stop this important work I’ve begun. It’s opened up a new door to me, a whole new world that I never knew existed. And for the first time, I’m really seeing progress in people’s lives.”
“Oh really,” Frank exclaimed, enormously put out by this lowly pastor. “Well, then, you just might have to go through that new door and never come back.”
Several Board members flinched in shock at this apparently real possibility.
“If you’ve got nothing more to say, then I’m calling the Board into executive session to discuss our options,” Frank continued threateningly.
“As you wish,” Pastor Wally replied, and quickly went out through the gold-encrusted door of the conference room, wondering whether this would be the last time he’d do so. But instead of anguish, he felt relief. In fact, he felt much better. Standing up to Frank, and standing on his new principles, was a refreshing change.
But then reality sunk in. What else could he do to make a living? What would his materialistic wife say? Everything came crashing down on him. He gloomily flopped down in his office chair to stew. He realized his next counseling session with Jim Simons was due to start soon, so he didn’t bother to pick up the book he was reading on spiritual warfare.
The angry knock on the door shook the pastor out of his gloomy reverie.
“Come in,” Pastor Wally said with both trepidation and anticipation. Doing battle with demons was not easy, but it was exciting.
Jim Simons barged through the door, his dark eyes glaring, daring Wally to look into them. The “evil eye” it was called. Jim was about as close to being possessed as you could get.
Wally jumped to his feet, pushed the door closed and grabbed his Bible. Simons hissed at him.
The pastor began to read loudly from several sections he’d marked off for just these times. Verses that declared his authority over demons. Scripture from the book of Revelation that described the ultimate demise of the devil and his “little devils,” the demons, the unclean spirits.
As Pastor Wally read, Simons snarled but backed away into a far corner, holding up his hands and arms in defense, as though the words were daggers being thrown at him. After a few minutes, he began to twitch and moan, and finally slumped to the floor.
Wally’s heart was racing, astounded every time at the power of the Word of God. Even more so, how just the name, Jesus, could overpower the enemy. “In Jesus name, I command all demons to get out of Jim and out of this office.”
Finally, Jim opened his eyes. They were no longer black, but they were devoid of life and hope. How could the Associate Deputy Director of the CIA come to this, both Jim and Wally pondered once again.
Jim raised up and plopped onto the couch. “Uh, hello Pastor Wally. Sorry about the, uh, the… “
Wally smiled for the first time that day. “Don’t worry about it. Just be thankful that we have the solution in our hands.” Wally held up the Bible as though it were a weapon.
“Yeah, I still can’t believe this is all real. When I’m in the office, it’s as though none of this ever happened. I feel as though I’m in charge of myself, but my thoughts, my actions, all come from a different place.”
“Well, as we’ve learned together, they do come from a different place,” Pastor Wally agreed. “The devil is alive and real and has taken over much of your mind through his demonic army. But he always stays in the background, not wanting people to be aware of him. In fact, he prefers that no one even knows he exists. Just a fairy tale, like I used to believe.”
Jim sat up suddenly. Wally grabbed for the Bible again.
“No, don’t worry, they’re still gone for now,” Jim said. “I was just remembering what’s been going on this past week. We’ve got problems a lot bigger than just my own issues.”
“Like what?” Pastor Wally asked.
Jim leaned forward, his voice hushed, as though the walls had ears. “We’re being mobilized into action now. All the talk, all the planning, is coming to fruition. Somehow I never really thought it would. But the breadth and scope of the conspiracy is mind-boggling.”
Wally’s eyebrows raised in puzzlement. “More trouble in Iraq? The Russians acting up again?”
Jim snorted. “No, a lot more serious than all of that. I’m terrified of even mentioning any of this to you. It could get us both killed.”
Now Wally’s heart started thumping again. What, oh what, was he getting himself into? “Well, then, maybe you shouldn’t say anything. We can deal with your personal issues and demons without getting into your work secrets,” the pastor said hopefully.
“But that’s the problem, my personal issues and work issues, as you call them, are part and parcel of the same dynamic that has me tied up in knots.”
“Can you give me a general idea of what you’re talking about without getting into the specifics?” the pastor asked.
“Not really,” Jim answered. “I’ve got no one to talk to but you. But more than that, the entire world needs to know what’s going on, what’s going to happen.”
“Another terrorist act?” Wally asked, his eyebrows wrinkled in confusion.
“No, far worse than all of that. In fact, I think the Bible has a lot to say about all this. The end-times are really beginning to happen.”
Wally frowned. Eschatology, or the study of the end-times, was not his strength. Revelation and other prophetic Scripture usually went right over his head, and that’s where he wanted them to stay. While the seminary offered some courses, they were mostly electives because they weren’t deemed important to the work of a pastor within a church.
“Have you studied this before?” Wally asked.
“No,” Jim answered, “but I know just enough to recognize that what’s about to happen in the world sounds like some of the things I remember reading in the Bible when I was a teenager and considering a career in the ministry.”
Jim laughed contemptuously. “But that was when I could actually read the Bible. Now, I can’t go near it without going into convulsions.”
“Yes, those demons will do anything to keep you away from God’s truth,” Wally observed. “It’s a wonder that you’ve actually been able to come here. The training, or should I say brainwashing, you’ve received from the Masons and then the Illuminati have created strongholds in your mind that allow the demons to seize control of you whenever they want. Except, of course, when confronted by Jesus and the Word of God.”
Jim nodded. “That’s why I need to regain control of my mind and soul. I think God is calling me to fight the enemy from within, with you as my partner. But then, that seems ridiculous. How can two people, albeit in somewhat exalted positions, try to derail Satan’s plans on their own?”
Wally pondered that awhile. What was going on? Where was all this leading?
“You know, the Bible is filled with stories of ordinary people, like David, Gideon, Esther and others who accomplished incredible, miraculous victories because they were chosen and empowered by God. If He were to choose us, it would still be Him accomplishing it through us, not just us on our own,” the pastor finally answered, trying to encourage himself to overcome the well of fear boiling up within him.
Jim’s eyes suddenly blazed in hatred as he leaped off the couch to attack Wally.
But instead, it was as if Jim bounced off an invisible barrier and was thrown backwards, crashing against the wall and ending up in a pile on the floor.
Pastor Wally’s eyes were wide with fright and relief. What had just happened?
Jim opened his eyes again, but this time they were calm. “Wow,” he said. “That was something else!”
“What just happened?” Wally asked, truly puzzled.
“I was completely taken over,” Jim explained. “I was filled with just one thought, to kill you. I had no self-control whatsoever. But just as my hands were about to close around your neck, I saw a huge being standing behind you, glowing but glowering at me. He simply flicked out his hand and I went flying.”
Pastor Wally thought about it for a moment and then realized, “That must have been my guardian angel protecting me.”
Jim shook his head in wonderment, still leaning back against the wall, “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. All this talk of demons and angels has my head spinning.”
“Well, you know, the demons are just the fallen angels,” Wally explained. “The Bible says Lucifer, once an archangel himself, rebelled and one-third of the angels followed him and were eventually banished from heaven, left here on earth to plague us. But there are still a lot more angels for us than against us.”
“That’s a good thing to know,” Jim smiled ruefully. “I’ll try to remember it next time before I attack you again.”
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