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An interesting supplement to our review of the UN, often found on these pages, is discovered in New Life, 21 September, 2000, p. 2. It will lead us on both to excursions and to reflections, dealing with things both old and new.
 
 

Here we find a report on "a recent summit of world religious leaders at the United nations to discuss world peace". It has, says the paper, "caused more controversy". This  sad result is no mere matter of irony. It is predictable as well, on sound Biblical principles, which never fail to exhibit themselves.

But what occurred at this so elevated meeting on religions (and all that) ?

The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan asked religious leaders, it is reported, "to set an example of interfaith dialogue and cooperation". Reputed billionaire Ted Turner, honorary chairman of the summit, is interestingly stated to have spoken of Christianity in an interview with the Dallas Morning News, as "a religion for losers", feeling, not unlike another we have noted on these pages, that "I do not want for anyone to die for me".  One wonders how a cancer patient would fare if he declaimed "I do not want any doctor to operate for me!" Rejection of diagnosis, unfortunately, does not cure disease.

It is also unfortunate that the disease is killing, has killed and continues merrily on its way of mortuary multiplication, in terms of millions, by war and futility, ex-God, ex-truth, with the most profound assurance. The Christian commitment to war is limited to defence of those menaced, and its energies are to due development of what God has provided, for His glory and in His sight. The nations have rather a different view. What is rejected as a condition, simply goes right on manifesting itself.

But what of the significance of the appointment of this kind to the UN chair for the meeting ?

This makes Turner's appointment in the United Nations for a religious summit chairman merely to manifest its full accord with the omission of Christ from the movements of that body, so that its efforts for peace have all the distinction that so many have lamented by its absence. It does not work without Him! Its failure to work effectively in peace has become a proverb, a byword and virtually a mockery.

As chairman, evidently, Turner called for the establishment of a new world religion based on New Age principles (cf. SMR pp. 866ff.). This sort of desideratum of the flesh has been sought by a number of philosophers for hundreds of years; and their success is as prominent in absentia as ever. It is like requiring all the mathematical results of all the students in an examination, to be subjected to new maths. principles, so that there can be adequate 'dialogue' and an effort to reach the lowest common denominator of their various ... answers. God is not mocked. The author of mathematics in our cells, and in our mental capacities, is not without precision, purity, principle; and it does not appear to occur to these UN specialists, that His mind is not available for mandate by ventriloquism of philosophy. You might as well seek to get to the moon by combining the principles of all the poets who ever were noted.
 
 

It would be so much moonshine.

The effort in that it was precisely such a thing that was predicted, the endeavour with the AID of religion to INVEST humanity with INCREASING control through religious veneration of the political and national powers, and their source... (John 14:30): that is not moonshine. It is fulfilment, of the Bible. Revelation 13 has two dragons, the social-economic-political and the strictly religious, the latter servilely seeking to enhance and establish the former.

More in the foothills of this mountain of oppression^*1 to come, is to be seen in a further development at this same UN conference.
 

• Thus we read this:

 
• "The delegates asked the UN to clarify the statement in the declaration that says 'everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others

and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and
observance.' "
 
• Russia under Communism had all sorts of wonderful provisions for freedom of religion too. It was just that they were not operational!

 

 

WHY ? TOO MUCH RELIGIOUS FREEDOM LEADING TO CONVERSIONS ?

In a meeting on September 1, it is reported, the delegates drafted their own resolution, condemning, it seems, the process of presenting their 'faith' to others in such a style that they may believe (the term proselytism is used), for, it says, this "has a long history of creating tension, conflicts, between religious communities". Such things, the tenor of the message as reported, indicates, "continue to impair inter-faith goodwill, tolerance and harmony." Many governments have tried something not entirely unlike this in philosophy, misnamed 'science' and condemned by hundreds of high level scientists, in the guise of evolution. Now religion is to come. You can be sure of it. This is one of its heads. Since God predicted it, it is merely routine that it is happening.

As we shall see, it is also endemic in man, that given he refuses the realities, they catch up with him, humiliating him even in his moments of apparent glory. It has all happened before; it is the scale and scope which is to grow...

What then of such 'religion' ? what is its basis ?

This means, as noted earlier, that the assumption is relativity, and the absolute assurance is this, that there is nothing absolute, and the knowledge denied to others is affirmed for itself, while objective  truth  of any religion is negated in advance, by presumably objective knowledge about this same unknowable objective truth, in terms of which the denial to others, and the affirmation of their own type of religion, proceeds. With leadership like this, one can see that the efforts in religion are as likely to proceed to reality, and HENCE peace, as a child's drawings are to be adequate for creating a 10 mile, multi-span bridge over an ocean.

The march of intolerance, with grave humour USING tolerance as a mode of intolerance, with or without understanding of what is being done, thus proceeds. After all, it HAS to, for that is the way the prominence of the dominance of the "beast" or political-social power is to proceed. God said so in Revelation 13 and traced it further in that book. What is happening now is just the mechanics of the thing.

It is really a grand and a wonderful thing to have the road map, and the overview, thousands of years before it happened.

With God, you see, a thousand years is but as a day.

(Cf. Matthew 5:17-20, and SMR Appendix D and  Ch. 7 pp. 620ff., 623ff., 348ff., 750Bff., and A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 12, 16, Biblical Blessings 13, Predestination and Freewill and Lead Us Not into Temptation, esp.  Ch. 10.)
 
 

The current day however is one of grief and anguish, however little some in affluence may realise this, always enticed by glorious DREAMS of future BLISS and MULTI-COMPETENCE for the race, which after all, are simply dependent, and that completely, on the mercy of God and His power, who made the machinery of matter and the liberty of spirit to construe, contrive and create. So vast has been the intellectual hallucination and the logical invalidity (That Magnificent Rock Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 3) in the endeavours to circumvent the demonstrable fact of our creation, attested by scientific method as categorically as by reason, that the fraudulent fiction that we can 'go on' doing what we have never done, namely make 'nature' and of it, ourselves, into whatever, and 'handle' it all with the éclat and flair of the creator, is as prominent as buck teeth... and as false as dentures.

The entire and even fabulous failure of the dithering efforts to escape the obvious (see
Stepping Out for Christ Chs.  7,  10, Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming ... Chs. 4,  5,  6, Benevolent Brightness or Brothy Bane 68, 81, Scoop of the Universe 51, That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1, 8, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, SMR Chs. 2, 10), providing material possibly sufficient for an entire new set of volumes of the alas deceased English Punch (are things too sad to laugh!). The impetuous romancing seeking to escape creation by the Creator,  is matched by the disrupted designs on the future.

Our race is getting increasingly into the control of a popularism which is being enticed into a humanism and a secularism which makes the religious a correlate of humanity, religion its product, and not God its source. Parallel with this is the circumstance that the intellectual failure of the false start which propaganda has long and assiduously sought to create (much easier than making man or his environment, after all, and a suitable place for the occupation of fraudulence), is the dewy-eyed vision of the glorious future. Communism had it made - that is, in words, apart from the absence of logical validity (cf. SMR Index, and the rest Index), and the fact that hell on earth was a nearer name than heaven - and was a mere experience of experimental failure, matching its irrationalism. Nazism in its unevidentials lusts was suitably assured for its 1000 years, alas truncated to less than two decades; and humanism with wider eyes,  is looking for takers, like someone with a new internet contrivance, hoping for backers.

The UN however is only one of the milieu of financial backers, although, and ironically to be sure, it is constantly in need of funds, and often denied them.

Human racism, more arrogant or expansive if possible, than its German efficiency, Japanese ingenuity, French gloire, or any other variants which from time to time some might suggest, and than the ideological twists and contrivances which from time to time replace it, has now its greatest vogue. The new twist, like some contorted dance for intoxicated 'teen agers (the age is chosen as it is more physically flexible, just as this needs great mental flexibility, even using reason to deny the same), is to add a dash of religion. The religious Mexican Hat Dance is to be added to the rest.
 

• Thus in the whole star-studded
• (you need 'stars' when there are no real ones on your horizon - that is, your virtual horizon in the darkness of obscuration by will)
• universe of the modern scene,
• this sort of UN meeting of 'religious leaders' -
• minus, as the New Life article points out, in the invitation list, a number of those who might want to indicate ONE God with ONE way in ONE Redeemer, from the invitation list! -
• is a signal.

Of what however is it a signal ? It attests the realism of humanism and secularism in seeing its moral bankruptcy - after all when the international body of psychiatrists had to protests the efforts to bend and manipulate Russian minds by devious drugs and shameless manipulation, it did not exactly shine with any austere beauty! It did not in ANY way seem to resemble heaven as prescribed, but rather to make a forced march in the direction of hell. So now, as the new tower to the heavens is being constructed as Biblically predicted (metaphorically, but the suffering is not at all metaphorical in these endeavours, historically!), on a real estate already marshy and swampy enough from the floods of past failures, which ruin the crops and make for starvation, let us awake.
 
 

THEREFORE THERE MUST NOW BE RELIGION IN ORDER TO GIVE AT LEAST A NEW LOOK AND A NEW FEELING ABOUT THE OLD LIE. Let us be explicit: the lie is precisely that we are our own, that God, if any, is not interested, not able, not clear, not worth while;
or that we are in some way to replace Him, Mormonism being merely one religion which is nearly tantamount to this, in reducing God to human types of proportions or 'beginnings', ignoring the actual necessity for the One who is, and then enticing men to become likewise. This has been its way. What it has been doing in a religion, many others are doing in philosophy, and none of it meets the case even a little (cf. SMR Chs. 1-3, 10).

But it is to be no one religion; it is to be nothing so inspiring as inspiration, however base and pretentious these unhallowed because unverified and unauthorised substitutes often are, as they foolishly accrue, sometimes daring to cite the Bible they contradict so voluminously.

No such a religion as prescribed and desired by the many, it must entice, invite MAN to become source and centre with any GOD very much UNDER CONTROL. In one way the prepositions says it: UNDER control and not IN control. The 'under' people versus the 'in' people. The god-makers for human convenience are seeking to subdue, subvert, overturn, invite, cause submissive coalescence with the created people, who know their beginning, and hallow Him through His ONE redemption, ONCE accomplished in ONE wholly triumphant enterprise of love and mercy, and follow Him with delight. They do this to the extent they are seeking to do it with ALL people. It is pure illusion and confusion, and in this field, as reputedly in some army, SNAFU, situation al fouled up as usual. The world is its stage!

What, after all, has man, has mankind to offer to come within an infinite distance of the glory of the One who made us, who calls us to account, and yet provides for those who receive His redemption in that ONE man Jesus Christ, whom He sent from heaven to earth for the purpose, in offering to PAY that account! (cf. II Corinthians 5:17-21).

But man is dissatisfied, as is indeed the devil (Revelation 12) and wants to roll his own. It is however not really cheaper, merely cheap!

So back to Babel's drawing boards it is for the international community (cf. Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Faith Ch. 7), and for ever so many other communities, who seeking with such hooks as community-ism, people power, humanism, human racism, are arriving at the philosophies of illusion and the romances of unavailable power.

There then is to come the Babel which has everything but truth, and indulgence strictly  for its devotees (cf. Revelation 13:14-15,17), while it is going to play GOD in terms of its leadership in due course (as in II Thessalonians 2). Mao tried it not a little, Stalin no less (the two by report accounting for TENS OF MILLIONS of death already in this little drama, while Hitler added his own 6 plus million Jews), various -isms have had their own pretensions, but this is to be on an international scale so that things should change... There will be no more England with its shores of (relative) liberty, Spitfires to contest. Islands will be done away (the Chunnel is more than convenient, it is symbolic of what is to come). It will be INTER-NATIONAL!

NOTHING is to be allowed to stand in the way of human racism. The same fever which grabbed Napoleon, drove Alexander the Great, seized Hitler like a rag doll, drove Stalin, shook Lenin, twisted Mao is NOW to become SO international that NONE can escape. Currently one of the methods is this: get people power, invent community, ignore its lack of unity, do not invite those not likely to succumb, but call it universal - after all, propaganda as Hitler so much stressed, HAS to be bold! Lies cannot hope to be bashful.
 

• So it is to the building, and THIS TIME,

NOT
• with POPE (cf. SMR pp. 1065ff., 1070ff.), not with the
• with HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE (cf. SMR pp. 903ff.),
• with something limited to ONE NATION,

 
• BUT a power in which misled people will succumb at the INTERNATIONAL level,

 
• JUST AS at lower levels,
• the Japanese did with  their Asian Empire regime,
• Napoleon with the French, expansively in and beyond Europe,  in their liberty, equality, fraternity regime (without enquiring too closely on who was the FATHER of these 'brothers' so many of whom killed others),  and
• the Nazi Germans to their Aryan concept (that is, in numbers sufficient to allow the control to pass to the regime from the people, and NOT come back, till it was forced back from outside in WW 2). This too moved into Europe like grasshoppers, devouring, insubstantial, soon to fall.

This time then, the scenario is to be broader, by following the prophetic prescriptions of Revelation 13, and adding religion in a very distinctive manner, at a universal level. The control however is, just as in Germany, for the apparently 'good' reasons of world peace (then through dominion by one nation, now through many nations), to pass to the regime, and ultimately to its 'Head'.

Have you noticed the human desire with sporting heroes, epitomised often in the Olympics, but clear in many sporting extravaganzas, for THE HERO, the ONE who is to inspire, achieve past all expectations, become the recipient of an adulation far beyond what is objectively required. It is correlative to the dissatisfaction, almost disillusion when the ONE fails to come up to some moral, personal or professional ... hope!

The intense passion which can arise in these areas, and in many rugby matches in particular,  is often simply suppressed religion, deviating worship: and no wonder it is called 'hero worship'.
Gaining its wrong objective, it can become wholly excessive and even lead to deaths in excited demonstrations and tumults.

The term 'hero worship',  at first metaphorical, is by no means always so at the last. Heil Hitler was in part a human response to the wonder of God, put subversively and ludicrously into man, and into ONE man. That is and has long been the way of it. NOW the message is to internationalise the failed political and military fiascos of the past (but some lasted quite a while in torment and in horror), and to invent a dream, give it legs and erect (metaphorically, but the UN building is on the way) something very worshipful, some MUST-IDEA, IDEAL, MAN, THING (cf. The Other News   5 ),  which is to SUBDUE man, for man, and distance him (in intent at the end) irrevocably from God.

That of course is the end of the chapter. God intervenes (as in Revelation 19) and the matter, the performance,  having reached its conclusion, is marked by the divine Teacher.

But let us return to the present, and the actual constructions in thought, policy and dominion which are proceeding.

Of course the building of the Babel can generate income for some; and it can seem a nice addition to the skyline of humanity. However the illusions of the past are merely about to be augmented by those of the future, until the whole scope of Biblical prophecy is fulfilled. The inveterate human desire to build a new heaven and haven, and to invent on old source without validity or capacity for the case, are precisely matched; and both are matched by the misplaced worship which, damned up, seeks an outlet such as Revelation depicts in its coming fulfilment. Design^*2 and destiny are to be seized, like the Jews by Hitler, and put in camps of propaganda to do violence to their reality.

It is not merely that it is predicted; that it is horrendously indicated by past performances, or even that it is progressively proceeding to new depths matching its 'heights' as it arises: it is moreover deep in the heart of the rebellion of human racism, that it should be so. Principalities and powers are only too glad to assist. Secular, and now, teflon coated 'secular-religious man' is not the only one with inflated ideas.

But depths ?
 
 

The 'foundations', though on sand, are extensive.

Thus we have to be given a fictitious past to enable a factitious future, both free from God, both always shrouded in the clouds of mystery, neither EVER able to show ANYTHING to the point, each based on fantasy, self-sufficiency, sequestration of divine goods (ourselves, our world, our past, our future) in the interests of the most colossal theft and fraud of all time.

• Neither can bring either peace or unity, because theft is unsound, and truth is inveterate.

It is called HUMANISM, and now it is becoming as we see, synthetic humanism, and as the ultimate form of racism, has an arrogance which asserts ITSELF, this time in oblivion of both its Maker and its Limitations, of its LORD and its DUTIES, seeking like escapees to make a track in the wilderness when the highway of holiness was long ago built and paid for (Isaiah 35, I Peter 3:18, Romans 8); and now to build a pretentious mansion in the swamps of collusion without foundation and only the most just of futures, in sinking sand.

Let us remind ourselves of what was said on this in SMR pp. 1008ff.

As a salutary aside, it might be noted that there is of course no question of any race being superior in religion, qua race. If many Eastern countries have but little entertained the things of Christ, many Western ones have treated them with ill-disguised contempt, or even - in the case of some movements - with reckless verbal manipulation. Some have taken the things of Christ by a sort of theological kidnapping (cf. Matthew 11:12-18); others have turned on them, on Him indeed and on His people (cf. Acts 9:5) with fury, destroying and persecuting.

As Scripture indicates, there will be those from "all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes ..." (Revelation 7:9).

If the Jews in many cases thought they had any claim to superiority, their history and their prophets have, as has been abundantly shown, removed any ground. In races and in individuals, none has any prior claim: only Christ. Those who have Christ have the prior claim, because He is prior, and provides pardon and adoption for redeemed sinners. These are born again, not racially reproduced, by the Spirit of God. Failure to distinguish between the truth that men and races are not to be elevated or reviled, as such, and that there is but one God who is far more precise in thought and speech and requirement than are men, and who does not tolerate toying with truth, is one of the greatest follies.

In Australia, it is threatening the very continuance of the nation. Appropriately, it is falling rather heavily into debt; for the One to whom this land is so much indebted in its early stages, as it was being built, is increasingly being distanced, like a plague, just as the plague of Aids is becoming nearer, to so distant a people, led with sometimes exultant but often blind dynamism, to the nearer viewing posts of hell.

'Nobody knows the truth about religion,' cry the dogmatically authoritarian breed of agnostics, who are really, because of their convictions, negative creed-makers, credulous credalists, showing how much they 'know' in the very act of denying it is possible to do so. It is to this elevated and austere mystery that modern-day Australia is being introduced by many of its political high-priests, who could certainly not pass elementary logic on such performance. Or again, we may find the deliciously portentous 'new' approach that religion is really just a matter of statistics and comparison, comparative religion and all that, the only fault other than physical harm being that someone else's religion is not... respected. As with all dictators, it is a monolith of authoritarian inconsistency; for this devious subterfuge happily condemns while itself, condemning condemnation, raising its fist to attack the glorious realism of Biblical Christianity, because this condemns what is wrong. On this principle, this secular philosophy first condemns itself before proceeding to assault the word of the Lord on the ground that it condemns! Hypocrisy knows no finer product than this! Reason dismisses it not only with logic but with contempt.

Apart altogether from the hypocritical inconsistency, what of the canon that you must not condemn ?

Apply that criterion in any other field and your mental nullity would at once be transparent. As for knowing that this is so when you cannot know anything, that too is a marvel to be added to the seven wonders of the world. This tired and dissipated irrationalism is the pit into which thousands of Australians are falling, their sails open to the gentle breezes so often emanating from the cooled and magnificent ... sanctuary in Canberra.

Indeed, as Professor Gordon Clark points out (Religion, Reason and Revelation, pp. 1-20, esp. 20), you cannot even define religion on this statistical approach. HOW do you choose your examples in order to determine the result, on assessment: that is, find what a religion really is? You in fact START with a de facto definition and then find what meets it, and from this take the 'examples' which, in sum, point to your conclusion. It is however, as Clark points out, merely an exercise in application of a rule. If you know what it is, the 'research' does not tell you, being a mere result; if you don't, then you do not know where to find examples. Further, the examples chosen, in accord with the culture of the time, may be as diverse as needles and haystacks. It becomes like like some brilliant individual 'noticing' that scrap-metal and Boeing 767's are both largely metal, and classifying them as the same. By such devices, a people in the field of religion may be even more distanced from the living God, while almost anything gains access to the name... of religion.

As always, indeed, you cannot invent morality from description, obligation from actuality or rational results from formal ignorance used as a criterion; far less when that criterion is shamelessly abused at the outset, by being stated in such general terms that it legislates for the whole area saying ... 'no one knows'!

How knowledgeable is this ignorance; how declarative this dumbness; how determinative is this agnosticism; how complete the knowledge that allows such determinations to be stated in advance of all enquiry, contrary to all reason, with a form of self-contradiction so total and manifold in kind that the unknowable has become a law, the law a lord, and the whole a cultural command! And what are these commands? Never state a religion is the truth; this is the first and the great commandment; and this religion which says so, it states that this is the truth by a glorious exception which feels at home in the imposture, because it is already dashed on the rocks of unreason. This it does by making any assertion concerning reality on a base which omits both reality as a knowable person, and means of access if it were.

Follies! Ignoring the evidence, the necessities of logic and the fulfilments of every particle of God's word as it requires history to act, this tedious spiritual Aids virus that is so prolific in Australia - but not here alone - is guilty of the woe of the ultimate racism. It elects the human race as its own arrogant assertion, its crux and centre, and recklessly disparages what reason attests, what deity declares: any command, any truth, any peace, any power or anything indeed, not sanctioned by this most perfect of races, in whom one may, it is made to seem, safely put one's trust. Meanwhile it intones the 'truth' that there is no truth, yet observes the canon of the creed, that no one can be wrong in religion; except of course those who say that others are wrong, or something is wrong. And how is this
known ? ah, by 'revelation' for how else, and the revelation ? from a source conscientiously denied objective existence; for IF it were to be 'allowed'... that! who knows into what extremities this nation might fall!

And that ? to sell the truth for convenience, to sacrifice reason for survival, how exalted it is! To tell the 'truth' that there is no truth in the process, is it not to be the saviour of the nation! How exalted are its morals, how glorious is its vision, how victorious its living under such preaching, such political preaching. Indeed, in such a fantasy world, even facts can become the enemy of this civic righteousness! Illusion is chief and continuance is king! (Cf. pp. 1064-1072 infra.)

Alas, God is not mocked; and this is but idle mockery! He has spoken His answer.

This irrational, self-contradictory call to affirm where affirmation is denied, to know where ignorance rules, and to possess the knowledge of the holy while insisting all such knowledge not only lacks, but is impossible: it is for this liberty from logic and lordly self-assertion in a vacuum, that the nation is to be directed to serve ?

For the ultimate racism, the new political international racism, this human racism, this creed is equal in the frenzy of unreason to any other spiritual squalor invented by man. Its practical effects, as we see it in action, are the same denial to liberty as to logic; lest, you see, anything be said which awakes from sleep.

In both cases, there is endeavour as if to thwart the realities of our design, by seizing our power, our natures, our liberties, our past, our futures, and stamping them with our own seal, as if they were ours. They are not;  and the more our futile endeavours as a race contrive to cover up the realities, the higher the cost. In the face of the divine mercy which the one God has supplied in His ONE redemption through the ONE Redeemer on the ONE Cross at the ONE time in history, for the ONE purpose of delivering man from sin and bringing Him to the ONE truth (cf. Galatians 4:4, and Galatians 1, 3, 5:1) - that of Him who IS it:  this human racism and erraticism is only the more tragic.

Never let it be thought that the folly which is prophetically trackable like some radioactively tagged object, is for that reason not equipped with a grief that is profound and a sadness almost unbearable. The extent of the need is shown categorically in this one Cross of Christ, when as one man, the Deity sent His everlasting word to express the need, express His own nature, pay for the highway of holiness, and secure the entry fee for those who come. With this, He paid likewise for the reconstruction costs, in regeneration so that the people who are His become His actual children, and are never divorceable from His realm or His peace (John 10:9,27-28). He does not force. That is not His way. Judgment may come; but force is not the entry point to His kingdom (John 18:36).

Peace! the alleged object of so much human racism: alas, there is to be a torment of war so horrible, that it is like getting drunk in order to remove a beer belly, and staying that way. It has come already. It proliferates like algal bloom on a beautiful lake. Current steps continue to add pollution. It does not bring peace or purity to that lake!

But it is time to look at the SMR pages on this line of development, and these we now add.
 
 

The desire for 'something greater' (p. 958 infra), yet without God has long been pathological: it is now pandemic. It multiplies, growing and showing in sects, politics, philosophy, sociology, biology, physics; while spiritual pollution at nearly every level shows no sign of levelling off. (Cf. pp. 251-252G, 315Aff., Ch 4, 578-581, 685-689, 693-732B supra, 836ff., 922, 955-958, 972, 999-1002A, 1010, 1076 infra, 1088G-H.)

Synthesis

It is indeed becoming a monster which is at the last to show its demonic head, in the devil's 'messiah', the "man of sin" (II Thessalonians 2:8), long in preparation. (Cf. pp. 506, 515, 696-697, 721-725 supra, 732B-C, 955-959, 963, 972 infra.)

  Over the history of ideas, ideologies, associations and quasi-churches, that final 'head' will have much from which to synthesise, select, develop for its fateful days of expressive evil. Chemist, chameleon and deceiver, his lineage is long. The 'father of lies' (John 8:44, 14:29-30) is his background, the beast his foreground. (Cf. pp. 422N, 481, 686, 696, 723, 743-744 supra; 886-887, 1031C infra - and refer Satan.)

Streams

There is, moreover, a river of events, prepared for its pathway, both over time and with growing force over more recent years, and it has many converging tributaries. The Hitlers and the Stalins have failed; but their eyes were on the world with weird hallucinatory philosophies, gurgling together with obtrusive or unobtrusive, but always real 'religion'. They have not failed to encourage the thought, long latent in mankind and often displayed: something greater without God, something human without limits, something international with glory. Other modes of this evil, this delusive stream - filled with the pathogens of unbelief - have earlier left their legacy in favour of spiritual supinity within the race. Today, we see a gushing with many memories and vast breadth, of this stream, like some expansive gulf, into the sea of destiny. There its man, its messenger, its delusive 'head' awaits in his time , the cue to 'arise' (II Thessalonians 2:7-9).

The Thrills of Contemporary Rills

Consider some of the contemporary tributaries of this stream.
As to NATO ? This lacks some cohesion, has some awkwardness with growing European glory and dimming American power mixed, lacks something of identity and is already finding another body, the Western European Union (q.v.), as the defence arm - of an ignited and increasingly excited Europe. Even if it be only oil burning as pollutant on the waters, it is showy. NATO was more practical following World War II; Europe has the glamour of past and the progressive self-intoxication that brewed in the minds of many a dictator.

But what of the UN ? (cf. pp. 749ff. supra). It has panache and propositionalises its barren 'laws' as Declarations, to many. Often it speaks like a modern Moses, but meretricious - and ex-God: an omission... of some infinite significance. The International Labour Organisation, ILO: it has a past rather than a future, more passion than morality, more Marx than marketability. The World Council of Churches - W.C.C. (q.v.) ? THERE is presumption, enough for any dictator, but it is parasitic on Christianity: with little power, and with no glamour or glory. It should of course be of considerable help to the devil's chaplain (Revelation 13:11-12, see infra). 'Community' ? (q.v., cf. pp. 1191-1192 infra). What of this artefact of social engineering and verbal creationism ? THIS, rather than 'people' (as in 'people power') or 'proletariat' (a befouled symbol of betrayal) is a code word for would-be dictators. It has the same principle as in the Communism of Marx, where the concept is a delusive substitute for tyranny by oligarchy, appropriately propelled by a ... 'Secretary'.

  The papacy ? Its glory is done, as it wobbles downhill to revelation of the falsity of its ... specialised revelation, in an explosive, itching, twitching, new-thing seeking world. (See Ch. 10 infra: pp. 1032-1088H.)

Psychic Alcohol

All of these, and many more referred to in this work, are looseners of mankind's fibre, integrity of virtue, independence, pollutants of the race's discriminating, critical faculty. Their IDEA of subordinating man to man, or to man's idea, or to man's empty but clamant claims... to losing oneself, one's group or one's nation in 'mankind' or in an international base supposedly representative of it, one of (hoped for) power, importance and (de facto) presumption: THIS IDEA it is which is here significant for the future (WITH its spiritual bases!). No mere idea, it has a passion like a psychic alcohol to the godless; and it drugs many idealists into its empty vision. The feelings (on the one hand) and the facts (on the other) of LSD experiences ... are an excellent symbol of its mode of operation. Of value, it suggests much: but it secures... nothing.

The Swamp

Indeed, they become, such things, like a swamp from the endless seeming insurgencies, which are a preparation...

  The demonic 'head' to come of it, then, and his aid, in this spiritual swamp ? (Revelation 13:1, Daniel 7:8, II Thessalonians 2:8). What of them ?

  Revelation 13:4-5,11,13-16, with II Thessalonians 2, Daniel 7:8,25 exposes both the devil's chaplain and his 'messiah' vigorously stirring the pathogens, enriching the mixture. Meanwhile, Revelation 12 is depicting for us Israel as a whole (12:1) with her famed 12 tribes, from which (Romans 9:5) came the Lord's Christ (Luke 3:26). This people has suffered and was to suffer during the whole church age (cf. Revelation 11:2, 12:6), and in this, our more recent era - a "time of Jacob's trouble" (Jeremiah 30:7) - exceedingly!

As to the devil, ousted from heaven (Revelation 12:9), this proud spirit is overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of the testimony of the brethren of Christ (Revelation 12:11), who do not "love their lives to the death". The wrath of the devil, exposed and degraded, is fierce on earth (Revelation 12:12). That fallen being is at war with the spiritual "offspring" of the woman: those who obey God's commands in Christ (Revelation 12:17, cf. Luke 3:8). That is, Biblically, the "Israel of God" of the now-installed New Covenant (Galatians 6:15-16, Romans 2:28). The dénouement is brief (II Thessalonians 2:8); but the preparations which we survey: they have been long. (Cf. pp. 422J,M-O, 451-453, 744 supra, 857ff., 999 infra.)

The Stage

Let us change the figure. Such preliminaries set a stage, aided by New Age 'consciousness' (pp. 867 ff. infra) and fragmented Messianic hopes, with the spotlight of fear lighting it up, lest the race fail to survive ... in its angers, its passions, its godless deeds and its 'quasi-needs' that aspire to predominate, with its frustrations and its bombs.

  It awaits the antichrist man-of-sin, as an audience awaits the rising of a curtain, for the agents of action, and for the lead rôle. (Cf. pp. 422L, 451-453 supra, and The Thrills of Contemporary Rills, earlier in this entry.) An anticlimax however is this anti-christ. Summarising the evil of many generations, and currently in his preparations, prophetically right on course for his appearance in the correct and predicted milieu precisely (cf. pp. 683 ff.; Ch. 9): he is scheduled to meet the authentic Christ - His advent as Saviour long past; and this he does in the epoch of Christ's coming return to judgment.

  Once the display, and the teaching, and the grand permission to history for so long, for the illustrative freedoms to instruct the human race, and to give it place: once these are past over many centuries, the end is short. II Thessalonians 2 is pithy. (Cf. Revelation 19:11-20.)
 

NOTES

*1
The mountain which will be one of actual peace and therefore purity and truth, is described in the prophet Daniel, chapter 2, in Psalm 2 and 72. It is this which will fill the earth in such a way that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14). That is He to whom it is due, the One who has paid, and who created. THIS, this human racism, it is not HE! Like all error, it will fail and be replaced.The cost of the transition is such that one trembles for those who participate in the delusion in the interim. It is precipitate, uncontrolled and illusory.

*2  Cf. SMR pp. 110ff., 119ff., 211ff..