Society is out of control. Any hope of really grasping what is going on is almost impossible, but people try. One example is the political world. It's a constant, daily diet of mostly negative polarizing news streaming out of multiple news sources meant to sway the minds of the listeners.  

Perspective

How many of us have experienced reaching a point when our minds go tilt like an old pinball machine? We are worn out mentally and can take no more. Today the world is in just that kind of chaos. In this age of instant communication, we are bombarded with so much information it is hard to process all of it.

Satan is a master of deception. He can subtly manipulate human beings to do the opposite of what God commands. We cannot forget what he did with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:1)!

Daniel prophesied at the time of the a dark figure would emerge on the world stage as an evil despot: “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time” (Daniel 7:25 KJV, emphasis added).

“Wear out the saints” is translated persecution in more modern translations. Bel-aw' is a Chaldee word meaning to afflict or wear out. It is used only once in the King James Version. Strong’s Concordance says it is used only in a mental sense. 

Dark figure of history emerges

This dark figure who emerges in the end time follows the model of Antiochus Epiphanes, King of the Seleucid Empire, who in about 168 B.C. wreaked havoc upon the Jews. The Seleucids, like the Ptolemies before them, held a suzerainty over Judea: they respected Jewish culture and protected Jewish institutions. This policy was drastically reversed by Antiochus Epiphanes IV seemingly after a dispute over leadership of the Temple in Jerusalem by appointing one of his proxies, Menelaus, to the office of High Priest. 

The book of II Maccabees 5:11-14 states: “When these happenings were reported to the king, he thought that Judea was in revolt. Raging like a wild animal, he set out from Egypt and took Jerusalem by storm. He ordered his soldiers to cut down without mercy those whom they met and to slay those who took refuge in their houses. There was a massacre of young and old, a killing of women and children, a slaughter of virgins and infants. In the space of three days, eighty thousand were lost, forty thousand meeting a violent death, and the same number being sold into slavery.”

After much suffering, the Maccabees eventually defeated the Seleucids. This example serves as a type of what pressures can be brought to bear upon a people. By this time the Greek culture was a part of the fabric of Judah. Some among the Jews, which were strongly loyal to the Hellenist ideology, acquiesced and either fully supported the lead of the empire against their own people, or they went along to escape persecution.

How will it be?

Will it be this way in the end time when this despotic leader arises? Second Thessalonians 2:3-4 warns us: “Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” 

What will he command the world to do? He will force all to except one religion. He will mandate that everyone, “both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name” (Revelation 13:16-17).

He and the false prophet will work together to wear down the world, and most will simply accept it to preserve their life. Many will rejoice because it is what they want. The saints will endure.

The saints will be severely persecuted, but they won’t succumb to Satan’s pressure or His persecution (Matthew 24:21-22). The beast under Satan’s sway will come to the point of making war against God’s true people, but ultimately, he will fail.

We can be thankful God gives encouraging promises of His desire to protect His own children: “A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes shall you look, and see the reward of the wicked. because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling; for He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways” (Psalm 91:7-11).

This is my Perspective.