7 Threats in Our Times: (#5) Rise of a Demonic Worldview and the National Rift

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It is dangerous to ignore the reality of Satan and his forces. I am NOT a person who sees a demon behind every bush, but to run to the other side of the continuum and act as if there is no spiritual warfare is folly and contrary to plain biblical teaching. We forget this to our peril:

 “I am certain that one of the main causes for the ill-state of the church today lies in the fact that the devil has been forgotten.” Martin-Lloyd Jones

I know that to speak of things “demonic” or “Marxist” is to provoke the proverbial “eye roll” in our culture today. Yet, here we will be speaking of both at the same time. I am doing so, because it is impossible, if one is honest, not to label the Marxist worldview demonic. It has hundreds of millions of deaths to its account and it seeks more. Not just dead deaths, but living deaths, unfruitful lives that bring no glory to God.

I have written about the history of this and the demonic influences upon Karl Marx before and we need not repeat it here, except to note that many had thought that Marxism had taken a death blow when it couldn’t get any traction in America and it had failed in so many places. But Marxism was reborn in our country through the Franklin School and Critical Theory. Instead of sowing discord between the workers and the owners, it now sought to sow division in the hearts and minds of those of a “minority” status, convincing them that they were the oppressed and the “must-be-hated-oppressor" was the white, straight, cisgender, Christian male hegemony, including every institution that he had built. These "minorities" were the new pawns in a demonic worldview that desires to overthrow all of God’s social institutions. When we speak of “overthrowing”, we do not necessarily mean their destruction by elimination. What we see today is the zealous drive to recreate them into a new image; to modify the language, the design, the purposes into something radically different than God’s original. There is a deep, visceral fervor associated with this. Marx’s “abolish the family” is driven not by some contrary philosophy, but by something deeply demonic. It is, of course, a scam. The pawns who overthrow the status quo will then find themselves, as every Marxist pawn in the past has found themselves, in a grey, barren world interrupted only by the lavish palaces of the Marxist elite.

This worldview has been germinating in America for over 50 years. Having taken deep root in academia, it has, almost miraculously, exploded upon us in the midst of the COVID scare. And we now awake to find ourselves in a nation that has a deep and severe worldview rift. For most of our nation’s history, we shared a common worldview. Yes we disagreed about politics, and sometimes fiercely. Some of those disagreements were enough to bring us to a civil war, but we shared a common worldview. That is no longer the case. Now our divide is no longer merely politics, but about the fundamentals of life and truth and liberty. That divide is exacerbated by the fact that this new worldview has embedded itself in academia, prime media, entertainment, technology giants and judicial, legislative and executive bodies. It flies under various flags as “social justice” and “woke” and “progressive” and under the guise of new defined terms such as “equality”, "equity" and “diversity”. Most critical is that it has made “compassion” the supreme ethic, though in reality, it is a malevolent compassion. This feigned compassion overrides freedom, it supplants truth and righteousness, it outweighs sane logic and common sense. It is the new litmus test for everything. But, in our new culture, it sells. As Rod Dreher puts it in “Live Not by Lies” it is the replacement for the old Bolshevik violence:

“[they] get their way not by shedding blood but by shedding tears.

Its end, however, is the same: total dominance; total control; total acquiescence of the masses. Comply or die. Maybe not physically, but you will be isolated, shunned, forced out of the means of communication. Some have already had financial accounts closed, jobs terminated, reputations ruined. All of us, if we are honest, must admit that there is a new standard associated with what you can say and what you can’t. Free speech has been lost and we weren’t even aware it happened. If you are guilty of CrimeSpeak (1984) you will be cast out. This is not future. This is now.

Survivors of the horrors of Marxism in the former Soviet Union, in China, and other places where it has terrorized millions and left mass graves and grey skeletal cultures, are screaming at us to wake up. They speak with alarm, pleading with us, for we now walk the same dangerous path they saw in their former lands.

This storm front is massive. When it is combined with the others, it may be fatal. 

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When Infants Invade Adult Bodies
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I suppose even worse was that after they would shout their obscenities, they would then howl in laughter pointing at him as if he were a joke. Of course, in the world of child-like behavior, this is considered the cruelest of all taunts… to make another seem like a worthless outcast… insignificant scum. Although I couldn’t hear what the young man was saying, he remained calm and would sometimes turn and wave at cars that would supportively “beep-beep” as they drove by. As I write this, I’m not sure if I was right or wrong to not jump into the middle of it. I was committed to offer help if it looked like it was going to escalate beyond words, but for now it was free-speech being played out, though admittedly disgusting. After the lunch crowd had returned to their classrooms, I approached the young man and our conversation went something like this: “Students were pretty rough on you.” “Yeah. A lot of nasty stuff.” “I’m impressed you remained calm through all of it.” “Well, I kept telling them that obscenities didn’t add to the conversation and just encouraged any of them to simply enter into a civil discussion with me.” “I’m sorry they didn’t do that.” “Me too. I really wish we could just talk about the issues like adults.” I think it was the “adult” word that helped frame some of this for me. I had, indeed, witnessed deep immaturity, with its pure emotional spewing and little to no rational thought. I don’t go to the park all the time, but I’m there enough to occasionally hear their conversations. I remember one of the first times, next to a group of high school girls, in which I was dumbfounded at the filth of their language. I spent over 20 years in the military, and I’d never heard anything that matched it. Where does this come from? My heart sank as I experienced what was happening Tuesday. It was quite scary, actually, because I was not only looking at such deep expressions of hate and loathing, but I was also looking at the generation that is going to replace us all. It didn’t look good. We woke this morning to the continued news that there are protests all around the country. Some have become violent and destructive. Interestingly, the chants of the protestors are much like those I heard in the park… quite childish, selfish and filled with hatred. Where is all of this coming from? In the park, my first thoughts were to put the blame on the high school that was right on the corner, thinking that this was coming from their classrooms. But then something dawned on me after reading the list of “tweets” that went out from Hollywood and TV and music “stars”. They were all saying the same things, in “star” lingo, of course, but just as childish. 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It erects in their heart, mind and soul a virtual world of all-about-me and my pleasure. And if things don’t go my way, I throw my tantrums. I call people names. I stomp my feet and chant emotional non-sense. And I demand. Like the 3-year-old girl I saw the other day stomping her feet, screaming at her mother, demanding her own way. For 9 hours a day, our youth live in a non-real world where lyrics and scripts and rap words rhythmically and cinematically draw them into believing that the virtual world of the entertainment empire is the world we all ought to live in… the world we WANT to live in. It seduces. It hypnotizes. It frames a worldview that is totally self-centered and hedonistic. And it is totally irrational. It spews out the most hateful and vile stuff. It beats up people, destroys property, flips off the world and then smugly chants “love trumps hate”. It is the la-la land of infants demanding to get their own way in their self-defined, virtual world. The problem is that the infants are increasingly in adult bodies with lots of power. Our addiction to entertainment will continue to stunt our culture's maturity. We must wean ourselves and our kids. Here is what troubles me most, however. Immaturity, when it doesn’t get its way, will often erupt into a “make you pay” rage. I sense that is what we are seeing. But I fear it is only the beginning. We are going to be treated to a host of "See what you made me do!" and "This is all your fault!" and "You'll be sorry!" acts and situations and new stories and personal stories, ad infinitim. Brace yourselves, for the revenge of self-centered infants who live in adult bodies and carry great wealth and power can, and will be, be scary.   
10
If Jesus Rose from the Dead, then... (#0)
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