August 5, 2020
Many of us spend much time arguing and debating the wrong issues. Right now, we face either an existential crisis (if history continues) or a crisis of commission (if this is the prophetic end). Real evil is at work in the world, not just on one side of the political spectrum. Most we see with our eyes is deception. History has not been a march of continually improving progress, it is a march toward a prophetic end, an end that demands a centralized and powerful government and the abandonment of objective truth.
If we are now stuck in the paradigm of arguing about how to make the ideas of the world better, or we have the mindset that this is just a moment and God has a plan, we are probably not doing what we should.
I present the following not from a partisan perspective. I am a conservative and a Christian. I hold to reformed theology, so you can say I am a conservative Christian. You cannot really call me a Republican, I do not defend the GOP like someone that supports a ball team.
I may come to some, perhaps many wrong conclusions. However, join me in asking and pondering some of the questions below. "First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing, ask what is it in itself? What is its nature?"
To be candid upfront, I make no secret of the first principles I work from. However, for this discussion, I begin with one axiomatic truth that is most relevant.
We live in a metaphysical reality that consists of both the material and the spiritual. Our ultimate reality is transcendent even if or senses are tuned to the material world. Many Christians forget large swaths of the Bible as it relates to the spiritual world and influences upon the material. I hold as an axiomatic truth that evil is at work in the world and has been conspiring for centuries to bring us to this point.
My hypothesis
Everything we see in 2020 is a natural result of and the culmination of trends, efforts, and 'accidents of history' that can be traced back the enlightenment in large part and further to the very early days of the Christian Church and in some cases to the dawn of Biblical history. Only a supernatural force, something that can transcend generations but is not quite fully in charge could have coalesced the minds of men, sometimes in small and at other times large ways to bring together all that is required to place us at this point in history.
We sit on the precipice of a great dark awakening. The confluence of technological capability and ideology that make possible, for the first time in human history, a system of government and control unimagined in all of human history.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. (Luke 17:26)
Introduction
Think back across all the news cycles of 2020; 'gun owners were going to start a revolution in Virginia', impeachment, WWIII over Iran - all that while we watched China literally weld people into their homes, throw them into vans, build hospitals and have strange smoke emitting from crematoria in Wuhan.
As soon as the impeachment failed the media turned on a dime to focus on coronavirus. We were presented pictures of spring breakers and told that the world was going to end because these kids were outside, in the sun, not social distancing (remember that?). All of the experts told us we did not need to wear masks, they were ineffective. We were told not to go to church, work, or to shop for anything but the essentials and it would all go away.
Do you recall the hairdressers arrested for opening their shops? The parents arrested for taking their kids to the park? That happened. We complied and waited. It did not go away, yet it did not turn out anything as China signaled to us it would nor the way our experts predicted.
But we complied.
Somewhere along the way some of the videos of George Floyd were released. Thousands decided to burn Minneapolis. Soon, groups in the Pacific Northwest leveraged the moment and began their own activities. Protests began in other places, some peaceful, some riots. The media, for the most part, told us, no matter what was burned or looted that what was happening was peaceful. In general, they did not even show the worst of it, videos, and pictures available freely on the internet.
We were still told in many places to stay home, stay safe. More and more, masks became a defacto requirement. Many among us took to social media in anger at those that dared not wear a piece of cloth on their face. Despite the conniption the media had over spring breakers, they never did, and never have said that protestors might be spreading the virus. Eventually, the same scientists that told us that masks were ineffective and perhaps even dangerous began to tell us we need to wear them. They had no new empirical evidence (empirical evidence says a bandana is ridiculous) - but we complied.
Recently we have seen doctors and scientists, people that work in a field where the science is not settled, speak out and express their professional opinions be removed from the public square. Many are not allowed to have an opinion at variance with the approved message. This is perhaps the most terrifying development yet.
Almost weekly we see videos of a guy that was smart enough and fortunate enough to buy someone else's code in the 1980s and make millions tell us that the world will not get back to normal until we have a vaccine, developed by companies he has a financial interest in.
Many of us wonder, if these folks can develop a vaccine for a coronavirus why have they never cured the common cold, another coronavirus. We wonder why Cold-EZ, a product with Zinc helps alleviate the cold but HCQ and Zinc are forbidden topics. Can both be true?
Through all of this, some trends have developed.
- ♦ The power of the government has increased, in big and small ways
- ♦ Our rights have been redefined, specifically the First Amendment, some things are protected and others not
- ♦ Bad philosophy and ideology are more than academic concerns - words do matter it seems
- ♦ Science is never settled, but it seems now that if you are a politically preferred scientist, you can act as a technocrat
- ♦ We are supposed to believe what the media tells us, and most of us are ok with other citizens being banned from the public square
- ♦ Evangelical churches have proven themselves feckless and unable to resist the ideology of the day, some merely kowtowing, others going whole-hog in to support unChristian groups and ideology
What is the nature of all this, who benefits
The 'Establishment': Corporations and billionaires have benefitted massively. A handful of them grew their wealth by $627 billion since February. Small businesses have or are shut down but Amazon, Wal-mart, Lowes, etc. all benefitted. Corporations in America are closely tied to politics on both sides, they support agreeable candidates from both parties. This new wealth, therefore, benefits all the standard politicians, national and local, that support crony capitalism.
Progressivism: Since the early 1900's progressives, the die-hard types that are clued-in to the strategic objectives of the ideology, have worked slowly to implement the systems of socialism. It has been a slow march. With the stroke of a pen in 2020, the foundations for universal basic income were established, under a Republican president and Senate. Sweeping progressive policies are generally only successfully implemented when the Republicans do it. We do not have a full-fledged UBI system yet, but the precedence is there.
Postmoderns: This is a nebulous term, but essentially I mean all those that are opposed to the traditional order, that believe truth either does not exist (a philosophical impossible belief) or that everything almost all regular people have traditionally believed is not true. In 2020, under the cover of social justice, we see now a full-frontal assault on truth itself. Some do not yet recognize it, but this is precisely what is occurring.
China: China had the coronavirus problem, shut one city down, allowed video footage of their draconian actions to be released and as soon as the rest of the world was in chaos they opened up shop and got right back to work. On the geopolitical front, they took advantage of our distraction to initiate a border skirmish with India, bully the Philipines into withdrawing from joint exercises, implement a complete take-over of Hong Kong and now directly threaten Taiwan. China has made out like a bandit through all of this - almost like they planned it...
Protests, what is the goal, what is the cause
We were told this all started over George Floyd. Now a couple of months later bodycam footage is leaked that completes much of the story that the other three angles began to tell. We can now see that Floyd was certainly not killed for racial reasons, that he was resisting or at least actively non-complying, that he said something about having a heart attack long before he was on the ground and that he also said he could not breathe long before he was on the ground. He asked to get out of the police car and lay on the ground. The arresting officers were polite, patient, firm, and professional with him. It remains to be seen how this all plays out in court, one of the officers did things wrong at the end. But no honest, reasonable, moral person can watch all the available video and state it was racially motivated. It was something that should be corrected, but it is not the story we were told.
But are the protest about racial injustice at all? If we are really honest, put aside the memes and arguments from social media we probably would agree that this is a postmodern protest. It is a protest against the traditional, against traditional power structures and everything that represents that. That is a more accurate description. It would be more honest the say that rather than wrap it in the blanket of a guy that died tragically while breaking the law, resisting arrest and living a life of crime. Floyd is to most of the folks on the street, the ideological types, just an excuse, a symbol of something he never was.
BLM has a history of supporting flawed causes such as Floyd. It was born around the Micheal Brown case, another situation where the guy that died was much more wrong than he was right. It is merely a front, a cause celeb to raise money and motivate crowds. It now has millions, perhaps billions of dollars to throw at very un-America and anti-Christian ideas and candidates.
It was always about power, and not about power for the people doing the dirty work on the streets. This is all just a component in a cultural revolution to dislodge from any seat at the table traditionalists that might resist further centralization of power by the establishment.
I can respect the opinion of someone that believes that everything should be torn asunder and rebuilt on new premises. I disagree, but I can appreciate the honesty of the position. It is hard to take seriously a person that says they support the cause of the protest and not the implications of the ideology. It seems to me that only those that are financing and enabling the gatherings could have any hope of eventually controlling or mitigating the outcome. Knowing the implications makes it hard to support out of goodwill.
What it all means
There has been a certain, and detectable, inertia throughout modern history, from the Reformation and Industrial Revolution onward, toward this moment. Broadly speaking, one can argue, and many do, that those events mark progress and that human history in the West itself is progress. That is not entirely untrue, it is true in many ways you might measure it. But that is half the story.
What is also true, is that through the entire period something we might call Jacobonism has increased on one hand and a tendency toward greater centralization and authoritarianism on the other. The Enlightenment itself began to become corrupted almost as soon as it began, this is natural, many of the axioms and precepts upon which it was based were flawed. We have 'progressed' technologically, ideologically and morally to the point that a truly demonic power can reign - it is now possible.
The postmoderns are correct when they attack the Enlightenment and Industrialization and Capitalism. They are right because these things failed to achieve their promise. They are wrong in their prescriptions, they wish to apply a modified version of an Enlightenment theory and then deny the origin of the theory. Their solution brings tyranny.
The only real solution would be to look back to the moment of transition between the medieval and modern and figure out the parts of the Enlightenment that we accepted that were flawed. (But of course, nobody is actually prepared to talk about that so our battle is between modernism and postmodernism). I have previously written much about the history of ideas (see below). All of that is really just history now. It is just a fact of our existence.
If you can accept that: Kant set the stage for rejecting Christianity, Locke for rejecting the traditional order, the Federalist through Lincoln the establishment of a unitary centralized state, the social gospel progressives the adding of religiosity to political movements, the progressive socialist the financial and social programs and finally the postmoderns the ideology of hate for everything traditional - if you can see that line of 'progress', then you see the world as it is.
There likely exists no unifying thread to all of the above beyond the fact when taken in the aggregate each has moved the ball further along toward tyranny. There could be conspiratorial groups at work - but are they needed? Ultimately a centralized state that rejects objective truth is precisely the sort of thing Satan himself would like to see established. If there is a common thread, it seems to make more sense to look for the least complex explanation.
If we accept, as any Christian must, that we live in a spiritual and material world, it is not a far stretch to see the least complex explanation for a thread to tie all of those events together, to guide, influence, deceive and shape the minds of men is evil itself, Lucifer.
It is he, more than any political party, ideology, or nation that benefits. Satan himself is the chief beneficiary of all of this. Building the sort of systems and control talked about in prophecy is almost inconceivable without a significant transformation of both systems and priorities.
If you cannot accept that evil is real, that we live in both a spiritual and material cosmos, that evil has definite objectives, and that according to the Bible all of human history progresses not toward paradise on Earth but toward a climactic conclusion before a remaking - well I suppose nothing I say makes any sense.
If you can envision history as a march toward a prophetic end, and then see how history actually testifies to that march then there are several implications to consider:
- ♦ If great men, intelligent men that operated often from what they considered good-will and reason, have been influenced and deceived to play a role - how many in our day are similarly influenced?
- ♦ We can see through history that even churches and pastors have been deceived and manipulated into playing a part in moving the ball forward. What does this mean in terms of error, even small error, in denominations now?
- ♦ If the spiritual world exists and operates in this world, how many of the things we see are deceptions?
I can tell you from personal experience that the intelligence community in the US is filled with occultists. Much of what I see in 2020 looks like a state-run operation. I cannot prove the link between the two, but I have seen enough to convince me.
Putting into perspective
If we step back and view the cosmos as a metaphysical reality consisting of the material and spiritual and take a transcendent perspective then everything around us makes more sense. Such a view would tell us we cannot know if this is the time of the prophetic end, nor would it tell us if there is anything we can do to affect the timing of that event - can our faithfulness delay it? We do not know.
We can view the world as it is. All of the ideology of the world is polluted; modernism, postmodernism, communism, and capitalism. None of that is the hill a Christian need die on. First things, those things that sustain us as a people and allow us to live a Godly people in an unGodly world, those are important. Tradition plays a part in first things. Some say "God has a plan", meaning he is sovereign and has a handle on this - that is true. But does that mean we are not responsible for taking stewardship of our time and lives? I think not. How foolish it would be for us to sit by, doing nothing, trusting God to fix it all, and damning our children and grandchildren to a terrible world simply because we believe God has a plan. The cultural war in America has always been a spiritual war, the other side understood that.
Nothing made of man is perfect, it is all corrupted and corruptible. But some ideas are less corrupt than others. The centralized, authoritarian, atheist ideas currently coming to the fore is much more evil than the flawed system we have lived under. Ideology is not a hill to die on, but stopping overtly evil ideology perhaps is.
This is where principled, thinking, authentic Christians must now take a stand. This may or may not be the prophetic end, we cannot know. We can know this is much more than a moment. If all of the ideology, systems of control, and vile hate currently sold as expression becomes the norm, we will soon endure a system of government that is neither free nor just. Christianity, as an openly practiced, authentic testament to Christ will no longer be tolerated.
This is not about partisan politics or ideology.
We have work to do!
- ♦ Real men need to stand up
- ♦ We all need to understand the ideology that opposes us
- ♦ Preachers need to lead and preach the Word, not as an abstraction but as objective truth and expunge from their minds worldly ideology
- ♦ Churches need to purge the subtle error they have adopted
- ♦ Christians need to use discernment in the preachers they listen to and the churches they attend
- ♦ Families need to come together to support one another and prepare for difficult times
I originally conceived of this in a general way years ago. I focused too heavily on the history of ideas and often missed the common element of evil. I always intended to write a book about the history of human freedom and how mankind has almost universally always sought less freedom and more control in any system established. it is not just the powerful that seek to control, man himself seems to relish it. I began this work in earnest in 2018. The scope of the idea morphed over time. I began to focus on how the American system of government devolved from the original idea of individual freedom and responsibility, from the onset. Here is a list of some of the items I have written in support of this developing theme.
- First Principles, Axioms, and Syllogisms (foundational axioms)
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Fourth Turning Clash of Inter-Civilization Cultures Hypothesis ( I accept now, with modifications and caveats, we are in the midst of a Fourth Turning, the difference each previous one has built toward greater centralization, this one will be what Aldous Huxley called the revolution that makes future revolutions impossible. )
- The Problem with the Megachurch, (Peter Drucker, an advocate of some pretty bad ideology, sought to use religion to effect social change, he was critical in the formation of the megachurch movement, these and other evangelical churches are going to play a big role in accepting flawed ideology and deceiving many)
- Centralization and the New American Order, (Federalist through Lincoln movement toward unitary central state)
- The Rise of Absurdity in Western Philosophical and Political Views, (history of ideas from Kant to the Postmoderns)
- From Radical Progressivism to Authoritarianism, (current implementation of bad ideology leading to authoritarianism)
- How Locke and Hobbes Were Wrong: State of Nature
Random Thoughts
- ♦ There is something to all this pedophile talk. I wrote last December that this would become an open thing. Now we see signs at protest supporting it.
- ♦ All this talk of 'elites' involved in pedophilia, is probably not just talk - it fits with evil
- ♦ Don't trust 'conspiracy' guys any more than you do the media. Deception is all about us.
- ♦ It is strange that there is so much official talk of Aliens now. Just remember, if the government tells us that they have confirmed Aliens, it is a deception, a tool to make us reject God and accept centralization to counter the new threat
- ♦ Don't put too much hope in any politicians, US politics is a lot like professional wrestling, some play bad guys, others good guys but they all go to dinner together after
- ♦ That does not mean don't vote or give up, we are supposed to live in this world, some politicians are more evil than others
- ♦ I do not think we are called to be cowards
- ♦ Don't believe that the military, government, police are on your side, if and when power shifts do not confuse yourself that government power will not be used on you and what you believe (anarcho-tyranny) - we saw a brief glimpse of that at the beginning of COVID-19
By the ‘Establishment’ I mean the Money Trust, the synthesis of corporatism, and capital with power and influence. (https://barryclark.info/the-ole-statue-of-liberty-play/)