We can all tell that, as Shakespeare put it, "Something wicked this way comes." It's not just Christian people who feel it. Even hard core atheists are getting that crawling feeling at the back of the neck that something awful's about to happen. Well it is.
Sun Tzu in his "Art of War" talks about how important it is to wrong foot your enemy.
“The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”
Our enemy, whether you believe in Satan or not, has been trying time and again to do just that as he does his best to make himself the actual prince of this world. His original argument with God was over how to best govern the world. He maintained that free choice was too dangerous to give to mere humans. He, of course, like a true elitist already had free will, but apparently didn't think humans should have it. God said no and booted him out of Heaven. So Lucifer set up in the Garden, told a few lies to Eve and started his rebellion and attempted takeover. He has succeeded in making huge gains over the centuries, but always angels and men and women of God have stood in his way.
Scripture tells us that as time grows short, the devil will frantically redouble his efforts. In the space of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries we saw the horrors of the French Revolution - an attempt to destroy religion altogether. When that failed, he tried another tack - creating a permanent class system in America, which had become a refuge for the persecuted Christians of the world. A vicious Civil War took place in which most of the Southern soldiers were deceived as to what they were fighting for. Later came World War I in which the lie was that the slaughter would be worth it because it would end all wars. The sneaky bit was that the carnage was answered by the siren song of Marxism which promised power to "the masses". Too late the masses who accepted the idea of socialism discovered that being a member of the workers class meant little more than sharing everyone else's misery while the elite class sipped wine in their country dachas and played at controlling the lives of the proletariat.
World War II came next and the new socialist power that arose in Germany embraced universal elitism in Hitler's quest to breed a master race. If we look at just how the Nazis did it, we get a chilling foreshadowing of how he's doing it now. The tactic we now call cancel culture has been used since time immemorial. Always the tactic seeks to elevate some people above others. The feudal nobility held sway for millennia. When the United States was founded and threw off the yoke of hereditary nobles, the forces of darkness looked for a new way to legitimize class separation.
Denied membership in the hereditary nobility, chiefly because of America's example to the world that you don't need one, the would-be upper classes adopted a new approach - Marxist socialism. It was a slick way to restore the noble class. Marx's socialism lumped the worker class into a single proletariat class with special leaders of a kind who are fit to lead. Darwin conveniently offered the American and European upper classes an argument. With Darwin's survival of the fittest evolution theory, the upper classes could now claim genetic superiority and the right for them and their offspring to assume leadership over the proles. It's the first step toward a more authoritarian system of government and a more submissive "masses".
Other things are happening out of sight in the religious and political world. If you can read history and then step back far enough you can see patterns emerge. The patterns emerge again and again throughout history. The tactics are familiar. The broad lies, blaming others for what they themselves are doing, vilifying some group by race, nationality or culture and making them the enemy. You see them disarming citizens to make them easier to control, closing the businesses and jobs of people who disagree with them, and suppressing media that oppose them. It always works out to a two-tier system, whether its nobles and serfs, dictators and the oppressed citizenry, politicians of a certain party and the proletariat, the Inquisition and troublesome church members. The pattern repeats even in the religious world. The move to world socialism isn't just percolating in the political world.
Excerpt from Amazing Facts article on recent events:
While we are distracted by the almost frantic efforts of the progressive left to silence voices of dissent, major prophecies that Bible skeptics doubted could ever happen are rapidly unfolding in plain sight!
What do I mean? For centuries, Protestant denominations unanimously agreed that the Roman Catholic Church, today home to 1.2 billion Catholics, is the Antichrist described in Daniel and Revelation. They also understood that, someday, its deadly wound would heal and that it would rebuild its influence in the world’s religious, economic, social, and political arenas. And now it’s happening!
Let me give you just four examples …
1. Meeting with World’s Financial Titans
I was stunned when Pope Francis recently assembled 27 elite CEOs, with a combined value of $10 trillion, from America’s largest corporations to form a group dubbed the “Guardians of Inclusive Capitalism.”
Investment banker Lynn Forester de Rothschild declared, “This council will follow
the warning from Pope Francis to listen to ‘the cry of the earth and
the cry of the poor’ and answer society’s demands for a more equitable
and sustainable model of growth” (emphasis added).
2. Environmental TED Talk
On October 10, the pope was the guest of honor at a series of emergency TED talks called “Countdown,” globally streamed presentations on building a better future by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. Francis referenced his encyclical Laudato si’, which says, “Sunday … is meant to be a day which heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others, and with the world.”
3. Global Compact on Education
During a special October 15 event, Francis called on “people of good will” to join his Global Compact on Education, a seven-point pact encouraging change on a global scale, with a particular focus on the youth.
4. Seeking Unity with Protestants
Then on December 4, the Vatican released an “ecumenical vademecum,” a 50-page guide for how Catholic leaders can promote unity with the broad spectrum of Protestant communities. In recent years, influential evangelicals like Rick Warren, Kenneth Copeland, and Joel Osteen have united with the papacy on various causes.
The Stage Is Set—but the Saints Are Asleep 
Two thousand years ago, the apostle John wrote, “And all the world marveled and followed the beast” (Revelation 13:3).
During his seven years in office, Pope Francis has become a superstar. With his genial approach, he’s even won over secular skeptics—especially with his support of evolution and statements that seemingly pave the way for the acceptance of same-sex couples within the Catholic Church. Now, following the recent election chaos, we have a Catholic president, a Catholic Speaker of the House, and a Catholic-dominated Supreme Court. And while they may be well-intentioned people, something dangerous is afoot.
A hundred years ago, a modern prophet predicted, “The Protestant churches are in great darkness, or they would discern the signs of the times. The Roman Church is …. employing every device to extend her influence and increase her power in preparation for a fierce and determined conflict to regain control of the world, to re-establish persecution, and to undo all that Protestantism has done” (The Great Controversy, pg. 565).
It
seems likely now that the papacy will use fear over climate change to
introduce “family- and worker-friendly” laws, including a Sunday
mandate—a “green Sabbath”—to allow the planet to rest. Eventually, this
global rest day will be used to completely replace the true Sabbath,
leading to persecution designed to silence the voice of God’s people.
Frances has also thrown in with global socialists on the issue of private property. According to the pope, “The right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods. This has concrete consequences that ought to be reflected in the workings of society. Yet it often happens that secondary rights displace primary and overriding rights, in practice making them irrelevant.”
To Francis, this “principle of the common
use of created goods” supersedes all others. That means that what you
own actually can and should be used by the public. In fact, the pope
refers back to his previous encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” in declaring this
most central of all principles an entrenched “Christian tradition.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you listen to what they say, it's possible to see the Beast and its Image rising. Revelation has warned us. The Beast will be a power that silences (or cancels if you will) all who disagree or resist. If we open our eyes, we will see the dangers ahead. You can't miss it if you can get past the wishful thinking that somehow an ideology that promises to make everything okay for everybody will actually work, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
© 2021 by Tom King
