At a summer Bible conference in Pennsylvania this past June, a preacher commented at the dinner table, “My understanding is it’s not so much that the media has a (satanic) agenda as it is they’re just looking to make money.”

As someone with a 20-year professional career in newspaper and trade magazine journalism, I constantly see how Satan’s system is deliberately—and with gusto—pushed forward by today’s newspaper and television news coverage.

There’s an obvious desire to attack the validity of the Word of God and, more and more, it’s unrestrained by old-fashioned journalistic ethics and standards.

A great example is from last year when National Geographic proudly announced the unearthing of the “Gospel of Judas” after 1,700 years, touting how it would shake people’s biblical foundation. The media promoted the “hidden” gospel as if was gospel.

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Just look at how the New York Times, for instance, slanted its front-page news: “The (Gospel of Judas) text gives new insights into the relationship of Jesus and the disciple who betrayed him, scholars reported today. In this version, Jesus asked Judas, as a close friend, to sell him out to the authorities, telling Judas he will ‘exceed’ the other disciples by doing so.”

The article continued, “Though some theologians have hypothesized this, scholars who have studied the new-found text said, this is the first time an ancient document defends the idea . . . The discoveries of Gnostic texts have shaken up Biblical scholarship by revealing the diversity of beliefs and practices among early followers of Jesus. . .

“As the findings have trickled down to churches and universities, they have produced a new generation of Christians who now regard the Bible not as the literal word of God, but as a product of historical and political forces that determined which texts should be included in the canon, and which edited out . . .

“For that reason, the discoveries have proved deeply troubling for many believers. The Gospel of Judas portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus, but as his most favored disciple and willing collaborator.”

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The reality is the Gnostic “Cainites” who produced the bogus Judas gospel would in no way be considered “early followers of Jesus.” They were promulgators of satanic-driven lies, as Paul even warns about in his epistles!

At no time does the New York Times seek out the wisdom of a solid Bible preacher who could have easily given the Word of God’s M.O. on Judas as a half-breed Syrian Jew indirectly kin to Nimrod, a classic type of the Antichrist in the Word of God.

The name Judas Iscariot itself breaks down to mean “the man from Kerioth.” As Jeremiah 48:24-26 reports, “And upon Kerioth, and upon Bozrah, and upon all the cities of the land of Moab, far or near.
[25] The horn of Moab is cut off, and his arm is broken, saith the LORD.
[26] Make ye him drunken: for he magnified himself against the LORD: Moab also shall wallow in his vomit, and he also shall be in derision.”

Jordan explains, “Notice there’s a man whose judgment comes at the Second Coming of Christ. If you look back at verse 15 it talks about the king whose name is the Lord of hosts. That’s Christ and he’s talking about the judgment’s that’s going to take place when he comes around there, and in Moab judgment’s going to be upon Kerioth, and upon a man who’s got a broken arm—a broken-armed man from Moab.

“Come to Zechariah 11 and watch all this stuff begin to come together: And the LORD said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd.
[16] For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces.
[17] Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.

“That word ‘idol’ there means like a statue, an icon. You know that fellow over there in Revelation 13 who sets up an image and they fall down and worship the image? That’s this guy right here!

“It says ‘the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye.’ That’s a reference to the deadly wound the Antichrist suffers in the midst of the week. Did you ever see a picture of Napoleon? He’s standing with his arm tucked in there like that. People say, ‘I wonder why he did that?’ Well, I wonder why you see old Adolph and he’s walking around like that.

“Then you see these pictures of baby Jesus and His finger’s out. You buy a Bible for kids and it’s got all these pictures of people who’ve got their hand out like that. You ever watch the pope bless somebody? It’s the same thing. That’s the sign of the papal blessing—three fingers out like that and two fingers out like that.

“And so you see the baby Jesus at Christmastime and His hand’s out like that, or His hand’s over here like this. And in Revelation 6, that Antichrist is described as an archer and he shoots that bow, and you know what the sign of an archer is?

“In a college archery class I took, the instructor would show us how to shoot and aim, and he said if you do it right—if you pull that bow out and pull it back, and you always seat that little ‘v’ in your hand right up next to your chin and then let it go—you come out like that with the sign of an archer.

“I’ll never forget him standing out there on that hill, holding those two fingers up, saying, ‘That’s the sign of an archer.’ I thought, ‘Aha.’

“That Bible you’ve got in your lap, people, is the greatest scientific textbook on things you don’t understand. You see them and you say, ‘Go on, I don’t understand them,’ but it’s amazing.

“When I was a kid there was the song, ‘The one-eyed, one-armed flying purple people-eater.’ Well, there he is, right there. He’s one-eyed, one-armed and he eats people—‘he shall eat the flesh of the fat.’ He flies (Genesis 6) and he’s red, which ain’t too far from being purple.

“Go back to verse 12 of Zechariah 11 and notice why I bring that passage in. It reads, ‘And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.’

“Where else do you read about 30 pieces of silver? Isn’t it in Matthew 26? That’s it! The next verse in Zechariah says, ‘And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.’

“So you’ve got a prophecy about the betrayal in verses 12-13, and there you have the 30 pieces of silver, or how much he’s going to betray Him for, and in the context, it’s the Antichrist.

“In II Thessalonians 2:3 is a reference to the Antichrist. John 17:12—this is Jesus praying to God the Father about the 12 apostles—it’s Judas in the passage.

“People, Judas Iscariot in this Bible, is associated as a type of the Antichrist and what you’re dealing with when you’re back here in Matthew 26 is a satanic operation designed to cause and bring about the destruction of the Lord Jesus Christ and the purpose and program of God Almighty.

“Matthew puts all the elements on the table for you. There’s the sovereignty of God and the foreknowledge of God: ‘I’m going to go die.’ There’s the religious plot of the religious hierarchy and then there’s the disciples just sitting around fat and happy, not knowing what’s going on.

“Then there’s that little group of people who really enter into it, and then there’s Judas and the Adversary coming in.

“In Exodus 21:32, you’ll see that 30 pieces of silver was the price that was paid for a slave when he was either killed or rendered useless. The guy that did it had to pay 30 pieces of silver to his master. So what Judas sold Christ for was just the price of a useless slave.”

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In Matthew 26:21, when they’re in the Upper Room having supper, Christ says, ‘One of you fellows is going to betray me—one of you men, my friends.’ He wants the idea to sink into them.

Jordan explains, “And they say, ‘Is it me? Is it me? Could it be me?’ In other words, these fellows, all of a sudden, they’ve got a guilty conscience. All but one of them.

“In John 13:25, notice one of the disciples didn’t say, ‘Is it I?’ One of them didn’t have a guilty conscience. One of them knew it wasn’t going to be him. John doesn’t say, ‘Is it me?’ He says, ‘Lord, who is it?’ You see, John was the only one of those guys who had a clear conscience.

“In John 18:15-17, there’s old John with Jesus in the palace of the high priest while Peter’s standing outside. John stuck with Christ all the way there. In John 19, who is standing at the foot of the Cross that Jesus commits His momma to? John goes with Him all the way. John was true.

“There wasn’t but one of the apostles to whom Christ revealed who it was that would betray Him and it was John. John is a type . . . you’ll hear people say that in Revelation, John is a type of the church the Body of Christ. If he is, then the church the Body of Christ, in type, is going to have the Antichrist revealed to them and therefore they’re going to have to go through the tribulation.

“John’s a type, people, of the tribulation saints who have the Antichrist revealed to them and remain true to the Lord in the face of it.

“Now in Matthew 26, notice that while the other disciples ask, ‘Lord is it I?’ Judas says in verse 25, ‘Master, is it I?’ Judas Iscariot just could never bring himself to call Jesus Christ ‘Lord.’

“In John 13:13, Jesus says in the Upper Room to His disciples, ‘You call me Lord and Master.’ All the rest of them call him Lord, but with Judas it’s ‘Master.’ He just never could bring himself to be submissive to Christ as Lord.

“In this chapter, there are seven different times Christ tries to win Judas from doing his dastardly deed, and Judas went on in spite of all those attempts by the Savior to stop him.

“Judas went on his way and had his way in spite of the Savior’s attempts to change him. I suppose you and I will never fully understand what that means to live a godly, faithful life, as the Savior did, and then at the very end be betrayed by a trusted confidant—one that you thought enough of that you let him keep the funds for the group.

“He was someone Christ had confidence in and then to be betrayed by him. That’s a heartache that we’ll probably never fully understand, and yet it’s there.”