All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. – C.S. Lewis
"The Sum of All Fears" (2002) is a political thriller based on Tom Clancy's novel of the same name. The story follows a CIA analyst Jack Ryan, who slowly discovers a plot by a European neo-Nazi group that is aiming to get the two superpowers (the US and USSR) to wipe each other out allowing them to create a fascist European superstate. The crisis begins with the detonation of a dirty bomb (nuclear) in Baltimore, Maryland. It is further exacerbated by the Russian attack on a US aircraft carrier. As tensions rise, Ryan discovers the bomb's black-market origin, and races against time to prevent a global conflict.
While a work of fiction, this film strangely resonates with the current state of the world. Instead of a neo-Nazi group, we are witnessing the globalist elites from various backgrounds manipulating their populations to foster division and pave the way for a fascist global superstate. Instead of a nuclear warhead, they are using censorship to silence and penalize their critics. And what the governments cannot do legally, they have their corporate confederates in the technocracy enforce upon the public. It’s the Deep State orchestrating conflicts between the left and right, conservative, and liberal, black and white, gay and straight, rich and poor, citizen and non-citizen, observing the eruption of civil strife, and seizing control in the aftermath. In essence, it mirrors the enactment of the Hegelian dialectic on the grand scale.
The Times of the Gentiles
And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place Acts 17:26
Admittedly, the further back we investigate history, the more difficult it becomes to determine the exact times and details of those ancient peoples. We must also contend with the use of overtly biased historical accounts, the use of multiple calendar systems (e.g., lunar, solar, lunisolar, civil, religious, political, etc.), as well as the devastating effects of war and nature (entropy) in attempting to derive the truth of what was. However, the Bible clearly outlines the prominent human kingdoms who came, and would come, as it relates to the goings on of men toward the end of time (Dan 2, 7-12, Rev. 6, 12, 13, 17-18, etc.).
As to calendars, just before the time of Christ, the Roman Empire embraced the use of the Julian Calendar, which became the primary method of counting time used by the West until the Gregorian Calendar was adopted in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. Nevertheless, the best we can reckon is that we are nearing the two thousandth anniversary of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection by the year 2033.
With that said, we should note that the political strategist Karl Rove once said, “Empires create reality.”
In a sense, we would equate that reality with truth because what an empire establishes as law or fact must be dealt with regardless of how true it is. This means that at its height, the Roman Empire created reality for that age. Great Britain at its geopolitical height, created the reality for that age. And here in our present age, the United States is creating the geopolitical and economic reality the rest of the world must revolve around.
Historians have noted that the average age of the modern empire (since 1AD) appears to be between 200 – 340 years in length. This doesn’t mean right at the 200-year mark, the nation collapses. What it does mean, is that nations/empires rarely stay in the same form for more than 200 years. We can see this transition very clearly through the 900-year existence of Rome, which went through five different stages before ultimately becoming an imperial autocracy. The Scottish historian Alexander Tytler chronicled this in his “Cycle of Nations” which shows in fact that those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.
From bondage to spiritual growth
From spiritual growth to great courage
From courage to liberty
From liberty to abundance
From abundance to complacency
From complacency to apathy
From apathy to dependence
From dependence back to bondage
Such as the world was, so it has always been.
The problem isn’t so much with the rising and falling of empires because this appears to happen with a fixed regularity. Rather, the problem is in the transition between the falling of one, and the rising of another. This is when one reality begins to crumble, and another attempts to force a new interpretation of reality.
For example, the Pax Romana (Roman Peace) which had existed for centuries under the iron fist of the emperors and the bloodied edge of the centurions’ sword, began to crumble as the empire went into decline. That reality began to crumble from within as Roman prosperity led to complacency, which then led to apathy. Apathy allows for corruption and wickedness to flourish in the shadows until it becomes tolerated, then later celebrated as the “new normal”.
The corruption, slow at first, steadily increases until it reaches the “frog in the boiling pot” effect where people don’t notice the deterioration until it gets unbearable. As the poet W.B. Yeats aptly noted in his epochal poem “The Second Coming,”
Things fall apart;
the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
As the empire begins to look inward to quell growing discontent, it diverts resources from the borders, allowing its boundaries to become blurred and weakened. This weakness invites lawlessness as invaders enter unopposed wreaking more havoc upon the citizenry. Over time, the “reality” constructed by the powers that be, exists only in the minds of those in charge, who without fail, become tone-deaf and oblivious to the internal decay as the disparity between reality and the state-sponsored propaganda steadily widens.
By today’s standard, reality has become so far removed from the national (and international) propaganda that it is triggering widespread cognitive dissonance. This distortion of truth (reality) is a result of decades of corruption fueled by post-modernism, particularly in the form of cultural relativism. Post-Modernism states that there is no such thing as objective truth because everything is relative to the person’s point of view. Cultural relativism states all cultures are essentially equal with no one culture being superior (in quality of life) to the other. If that were true, why do millions attempt to come to the United States (and other Westernized nations) every year? Nevertheless, with no objectivity to truth, there can be no truth. This is why today, our government:
Influences education by removing God from the public sphere, mandating the theory of evolution as our source of humanity, while promoting the idea that life on earth is accidental
Encourages and nurtures the radicalization of anti-God and anti-Christian teachings via nihilism, socialism, atheism, materialism, hedonism, etc., and then wonders why the suicide, alcohol, and drug rates are skyrocketing
Empowers the cartel of bankers by putting them in control of all currency in a non-federal institution which can never be audited
Who then implements cradle-to-grave taxes and imposes a system of perpetual taxes on land and assets even if owned and paid for
Creates a system of perpetual poverty under the guise of fighting poverty
Strongly endorses the billion-dollar abortion industry while simultaneously appealing to children’s safety as a justification for implementing various stringent rules and regulations (often invoking the "think of the children" argument)
Creates unnecessary bureaucratic rules and agencies, only to enforce the unnecessary rules they create
Erases gender norms by declaring men can be women and vice versa by mandating the usage of absurd pronouns
Cannot define a woman, yet claims women are oppressed by the patriarchy
Uses reverse racism against whites (Caucasians) as justification for fighting racism
Unconstitutionally enforces medical rules and regulations that financially benefit those pharmaceutical companies who become significant donors to their political initiatives
Unconstitutionally gives non-citizens preferential treatment over citizens
Utilizes perpetual crises, whether genuine or manufactured, as a means to legislate and govern the nation on a day-to-day basis
Allocates billions of taxpayer dollars to secure the borders of other nations, while neglecting our border concerns
Justifies widespread and illicit surveillance by seventeen intelligence agencies on its citizens under the pretext of national security, again, while overlooking issues related to open borders and illegal immigration policies at home
These are but a sampling of the absurdities that the supposed “leader of the free world” is imposing upon itself and its allies. As you can see, by creating illogical and contradictory rules and regulations that defy the very document from which they derive their authority (i.e., the US Constitution) is simultaneously dismantling the document that gives them their legitimacy to rule.
And that is the point. The US and our present world order have to go to make way for what Satan and his fallen angels are preparing.
The Reality
The reality is, despite our modern conveniences, we are regressing physically, spiritually, morally, mentally, and emotionally as a species while simultaneously advancing technologically. This dichotomy between our destructive capabilities and our diminishing moral aptitude has been exponentially accelerated in just the past 120 years. Ironically, just think of how much we could have accomplished had we not fallen prey to the deceptive and destructive doctrines of demons in our launch of the Age of Reason.
For example, if the Bible is true, and God is real, then given that premise, we could have advanced our sciences along that path of understanding. Instead, we wasted nearly three centuries, trillions of dollars/pounds/other currencies, hundreds of millions of lives, numerous wars, and generations of men, women, and children by giving ear to those promoting:
Uniformitarianism: Charles Lyell (1797-1875)
Definition: The geological principle that the same natural processes and gradual changes observable today have been at work throughout Earth's history, influencing its formations.
Malthusianism: Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
Definition: The theory that population growth tends to outstrip the means of subsistence, leading to inevitable checks such as famine, disease, or war.
Socialism: Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825)
Definition: An economic and political system advocating for collective or government ownership and control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange.
Scientific Naturalism: Charles Darwin 1809-1882)
Definition: The approach of explaining phenomena through natural laws and empirical observation, rejecting supernatural explanations. In the context of Darwin, it refers to explaining biological evolution through natural processes.
Marxism/Communism: Karl Marx (1818-1883), Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
Definition: A socio-economic and political theory advocating for a classless society with common ownership of the means of production, aiming to eliminate social and economic inequality.
Social Darwinism: Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
Definition: A distorted application of Charles Darwin's ideas to society, suggesting that societal progress results from the survival of the fittest, often used to justify inequality.
Eugenics: Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911)
Definition: The study and promotion of selective breeding to improve the genetic quality of a population, often with the aim of enhancing desirable traits.
Nihilism: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Definition: A philosophical perspective rejecting or denying the existence of inherent meaning or value in life, often associated with skepticism toward traditional beliefs and values.
Cultural Marxism: The Frankfurt School (1920s-Present)
Was a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, which was originally founded in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1923.
The Big Bang Theory: Georges Lemaître (1894-1966)
While it’s doubtful these men and women truly understood what they were unleashing upon our world, had they known, I hope they would have reconsidered. Nevertheless, they opened Pandora’s box of bad ideas which then began to poison our world to this day. Thus, much of the West is now in a Post-Modern, post-Christian, and rapidly paganizing world drowning in darkness. Our world is racing in the opposite direction in every possible metric pitting itself against the reality God established.
While the Bible does not laud itself as a scientific book, the science contained therein, has been proven correct in recent decades. In other words, it’s taken the world until just the past few decades to catch up to what was written thousands of years ago. Hearkening back to the teachings of the late Chuck Missler, it is believed that between the macrocosm, the microcosm, and the metacosm (see image below), we currently inhabit 4 of the 10 dimensions. The four we inhabit consist of is found in Ephesians 3:17-19
So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
We see in the very first verse of the Bible, four of the Five W’s which refer to the five interrogative words that are often used to gather essential information in journalism, research, investigation, and other forms of inquiry. The Five W's are: Who, What, When, Where, and Why.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1
Who: God
What: Created
When: In the beginning
Where: the heavens and the earth
We see the fifth W nested throughout the rest of chapter 1 as an act of God’s divine will to create living beings. In through it all, God repeatedly states that what He created was “good”.
Why: Because He can and willed to do it
We have seen in the Age of Enlightenment (also called the Age of Reason) during the 17th-18th centuries, an attack on all these listed in Genesis 1 which has tragically set our world’s trajectory on a collision course with the One who created it. Our age now has been called many things. The Fourth Turning Point. The Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Age of Information. However, it is becoming in a very real sense, the Age of Antichrist. We could easily call it this because our world does nothing now but promote those things that are anti-God, Anti-Christ, anti-Christian, and anti-Israel. The phrase I used years back was in calling it the Antichrist Zeitgeist (or spirit of the age). It is becoming more self-evident with each passing day that we are sinking deeper and deeper into it.
The Sum of All Fears
Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
“Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away
Their cords from us.”
Psalm 2:1-3
The Sum of All Fears is not just some Machiavellian conspiracy pitting one side against another. The real sum of all fears, at least from the humanist/globalist/God-hater perspective, is that God is real, and He will really judge them one day. They are desperately fighting against this inevitability much in the same way one fights the air by punching it. We see this fear culminate in the world’s last great, foolish, unwinnable battle commonly referred to as Armageddon.
And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Rev. 16:13-14
And that is what Satan is preparing for, which is what this world is preparing for. The world never moves away from what the Bible foretells, it always moves towards it. While the devil’s human puppets may not understand what is coming, you can bet your bottom dollar the demons know and believe (James 2:19) and have so blindly convinced humans they can deify themselves that they are racing toward this end.
However, all it leads to is a unipolar world, led by one government (the Beast), one economy (the Mark), one religion (the Harlot Mystery Babylon), headed by one man (The Antichrist), and assisted by his aide-de-camp, the False Prophet. All of what we see today is the converging of the signs that are frog-marching the world of today into the world of Revelation 13.
Conclusion
Shadows are interesting things. They communicate a reality, yet, they themselves are not really real. They indicate the thing that is coming, yet, they are not the things themselves.
Pastor Ken Ortize (Calvary Spokane)
If you think I came here today to only be the bearer of bad news, think again. I come with glad tidings and great news of better things to come.
Consider the lilies and the sparrow (Luke 12:6-7, 26-28) that God lavishes His attention towards, yet they are here today and gone tomorrow. Now, even more so, consider the special attention God has lavished on the land of Israel (Genesis 15:18), the city of Jerusalem (Zech. 8:3, Psalm 125:2, Jeremiah 3:17, Zech. 12:1-3, 8-9, Joel 3:20, etc.), and the tabernacle and the temple (Exodus 25:8-9, 1 Chronicles 22:9-10, Acts 7:44-46).
To an even greater extent, all of what we see (or can't see) today, from the smallest indivisible unit in the microcosm to the vast stretching of the macrocosm, i.e., the reality of our existence, is temporary. Think of all He has done in preserving them to fulfill His purposes, and even still, these are but a shadow of the good things to come (Hebrews 10:1). Why is that? Because the form of this world is passing away.
And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.
1 John 2:17
Even the Jewish people, God's chosen, who were meant to be a kingdom of priests, were meant to pave the way for the Messiah to come. But even in their rejection of Him, something better came, which allowed for salvation to come to all by way of the Church, the body of Christ, who by the power of the Holy Spirit, unites both Jew and Gentile into one new man. If by their failing...salvation has come to the Gentiles...and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness! (Rom. 11:11-12 paraphrased).
For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink [g]into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many. 1 Cor. 12:12-14
I believe that the form of this world, with its sin, violence, wars, corruption, wickedness, and so on, will be no more remembered in the ages to come, than that Antediluvian world before the flood we puzzle over now. We have an oh-so-brief description of it in Genesis 6, but just as the waters have washed away the physical structures and the living creatures from existence, so also has time washed away its existence from human memory.
Likewise, the coming Kingdom and the ages to follow beyond that will wash away the blood-stained memory of this fallen world. As John records, And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. (Rev 21:4) If you could humor me for a moment, what we are waiting for (as stated in the common slang of our day) we are waiting on the real real.
Just as the Bible in many places speaks to our existence and our world here as being but a vapor, a temporary, passing thing (James 1:10, 4:14, Psalm 103:15, 1 Peter 1:24, Psalm 90:5-6, 1 John 2:17, Matthew 24:35), so too does it speak of the eternality and certainty of the divine realm. Of which, my favorite passage is by Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Cor. 4:16-18
In conclusion, everything special to God in this world is merely a shadow of or is patterned after, the real thing in the heavenly domain. The city of Jerusalem, the Temple, and even us. All of this was done to demonstrate, as the great Jack Kelly once put it, the incomparable riches of His grace. Quoting Jack he writes:
"1 Peter 1:10-12 tells us neither the prophets of old nor even the angels in heaven really understood what God was going to accomplish through the Church. But Paul revealed it to us.
He said God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His Grace (Ephes 2:6-7).
Then in Ephesians 3:10-11 he said God’s intent in doing this was that now, through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms (angels) according to His eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Put these two statements together and you can see that God’s purpose was to demonstrate the full extent of His capacity for love, and He chose to do so through the Church. When we were dead in our sins He made us alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins and canceled the list of our violations of His law (Colossians 2:13-14) and now regards us as a new creation, as righteous as He is (2 Cor. 5:17, 21).
He gave us the authority to become His own children (John 1:12-13) and made us His heirs as well (Galatians 4:4-7). He raised his Son from the dead to a place at His right hand with authority that far exceeded any heavenly power (Ephesians 1:20-21), and then He raised us up and seated us there with Him (Ephesians 2:6-7).
At the appointed time He will send His Son to collect us and take us to a place of unimaginable beauty that He has been preparing for us for almost 2,000 years (John 14:2-3). In doing so He will rescue us from the time and place of the coming wrath (1 Thes. 1:10, Romans 5:9) and we will dwell with Him forever (1 Thes. 4:16-17). We won’t have done anything to deserve this, except to believe that He did it for us.
I think that qualifies as an unparalleled demonstration of the incomparable riches of His grace." (Source- GraceThruFaith)
When you understand this, and truly believe it, not only frees you from the burden of sin but brings new meanings to even the scars from sin we bear, just as our Lord bears (John 20:24-27, Rev 5:6), because it reminds us of who we used to be and how far God has brought us on our journey from damnation to redemption. As a reminder, biblical salvation comes to us in Scripture in three tenses.
Justification: frees us from the penalty of sin (Rom 3:23-24)
Sanctification: frees us from the power of sin (2 Thess 2:13)
Glorification: frees us from the presence of sin (Rom 8:28-30)
The Apostle Paul summarizes this all brilliantly in his letter to the Ephesians.
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Eph. 2:4-7
Post Scriptum: Even so, may 2024 be the year of our Lord's return for His bride the Church. But whether now, or later, whenever the Lord comes, may we always live with the expectancy of His return because, unlike the schemes of men and devils, God's plans never fail. His love never fails to deliver even the most wretched from amongst us (myself included). His promises never return void. While the world desperately prepares for the sum of all their fears, let us rest in the sum of our hope, the Blessed Hope, who is Jesus Christ Himself...the author and finisher of our faith. Even so, Maranatha!
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:1-2