Biography of Donald Robert Clasen

Donald Robert Clasen

Born July 16, 1947,

Perth Amboy, NJ USA

Graduated from:

Michigan State University, 1969, B.A. in Humanities

Genesis Discipleship Training Center, Santa Rosa, CA 1976

Minneapolis School of Theology, 1978

I grew up near New York City in a typical middle class home of the day. My father was an atheist, my mother a nominal believer. We had little church exposure growing up and no discussion of God or the Bible at home. Yet our parents were big believers in education and ready to sacrifice all to see their kids graduate from college.

My college years were the tumultuous yet exciting late 1960s, and after I graduated I of course resolved to put my diploma to good use by moving to California to be a hippie. During the next five years in the Bay Area I had a couple of powerful religious experiences (only one of which while on drugs, BTW) that convinced me there must be a God out there. But it wasn’t until May 22, 1974 while reading a book about the end time prophecies that I actually gave my life to Jesus Christ.

I was a big futurist and a professional astrologer in the early 1970s, yet could not decide if the world was indeed on the verge of a glorious New Age or a global disaster. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius was all the rage at the time—the Fifth Dimension even had a song about it.

Yet this was during the depths of the Cold War, and the danger of nuclear annihilation was very real. Nothing I read about human history gave me any comfort, and I was convinced that technology would rapidly out-pace man’s historically-pathetic morality.

That Hal Lindsey book on the prophecies convinced me both scenarios were right, that there was a true New Age ahead, the Millennial reign of Jesus Christ in fact, after a short period of “apocalypse.” As bad as that potential was, I took solace in the thought that at least God has promised mankind that we would never suffer complete annihilation.

Within months I found myself enrolled at Genesis Discipleship Training Center, then located on the campus of Christian Life Center by Highway 101 in Santa Rosa, California. At the end of that first year I was called by God into the ministry, not as a pastor but as a teacher in 1975.

In the decades that followed I studied much, wrote some, and felt led by God to check out first-hand all the “hottest” circles in the Evangelical/Charismatic world. As my understanding of the Kingdom grew, at the same time I had a growing unease that something was profoundly wrong with the Church world itself. And indeed there was, now manifesting in our times as the appearance of the tares foretold by Jesus (Mt 13:25ff), also known as the Great Apostasy, The Big Lie and the Strong Delusion of a false Church (II Thess 2).

Over a period of some 30 years, I came to call this growing disillusionment, “death by a thousand cuts.” It is certainly not a death to God; my faith has never been stronger. But it was a long, slow, painful process that involved a lot of psychological struggle. (I.e., “Who am I to be critical of so many people and things?”).

And yet there they were. It might be objections in doctrine, theology, life style, priorities, philosophy of life, Church history, ministry style, public image, eventually in radical right politics and especially in eschatology. I could not  for instance, understand how Church leadership could be so contemptuous of the warnings of Christ about “watching” (Lu 21:34-36; Mk 13:33-37), which I took to be careful about being mindful of deception and distraction, and not paying careful attention to the mystery clues about the end times.

And yet what do we see in our time but Dominionism as a default eschatology, reckless and careless. It is a very heretical attitude about the end of the age as I explain in articles in this website.

While the end times is a vast subject covering many different things, I have sought to concentrate on this site on the role of the US and Israel in the last days. Here the truth here is pretty much the opposite of what these two nations think it is. This is the theme of my showcase book American Babylon, American Antichrist, a copy of which I would urge you to get to understand “where I’m coming from.”

Beyond that, a good couple of articles to get oriented would be “Beware The Snare-What This Website Is All About,” and “A Brief Outline of the Great Tribulation.” These articles and my book will help you understand what is wrong with Dispensationalism (Pre-Trib Rapture theology basically), the claim the US is not mentioned in the prophecies, a European Union or UN-based Antichrist, the false claim he will be a man of peace, a seven year Tribulation period, 144,00 Jewish evangelists to come, and the cartoonish nature of how we look at the times we are living in.

I have done very little pastoring in my life but I would like to at some point start a Tabernacles church here in the Los Angeles area if I can generate enough interest in others. Maybe you will be one of them. Together we can be like the men of Issachar who had “understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (I Chron 12:32).