“…. the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times…..” (1 Chronicles 12:32).
Man was created a spirit; he was made in the image of God, who is Spirit. God clothed man with a body and breathed life into him so that he became a living soul. Thus man, in the likeness of God, was made triune; body, soul and spirit. So much the scriptures teach.
Man lives in a material, physical universe. He relates to that universe through body and soul; he can see, hear, touch, smell and feel that which makes up much of that universe and his mind is able to draw conclusions and think about that universe.
But there is much that is outside man’s ability to see or understand of the universe; his capacity to relate to the universe is limited by the fact that, although created as spirit, body and soul, man’s rebellion against his Creator has destroyed the spiritual capacities he once enjoyed, sentencing him to life imprisonment in a material world in which he can never be at home.
For in each man there is a longing to know the unknowable, to touch the untouchable, to see the unseeable; to connect with what lies beyond life in this material, physical world. This longing is deeply embedded in the heart of every human person, because it was inbuilt at his creation; it is the ability to relate to God and the eternal world. There is nothing in this world that can satisfy this longing except a living relationship with God.
Many are those who seek it, but few are those who find it. The path cannot be discovered by scholarship, or found by following preachers, prelates, priests and popes. It is not reserved for the brightest or the best, the mighty or the strong, the rulers or the rich. On the contrary, such as these have little prospect of finding spiritual truth, for they prosper and flourish in a material world. But the hunger endures in the deepest recesses of the heart of every man – and remains unsatisfied.
Because they deny the reality of the spiritual, men seek to satisfy this gnawing hunger in many ways; pursuing wealth, or fame, or power over others; seeking satisfaction in worldly success. But there is nothing in this world that can bring the satisfaction that derives from a spiritual hunger. This frenetic pursuit of “things” – riches, sex, celebrity, significance – becomes self-destructive idolatry, leading ultimately to degeneration and madness.
In the Nazi era, from 1933 to 1945, those willing to see are given a compressed view of the end times foreshadowed in the Bible. This time was like a prophetic preview of what was to come. Hitler was a type of the anti-Christ and his movement a type of the demonic kingdom that is to rule upon earth for a season. Hitler was regarded as a god; “The Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation” proclaimed the Minister for Church Affairs, Dr. Kerrl in February 1937; and in the spring of 1938, Christian pastors were ordered to swear a personal oath of allegiance to the Fuehrer. It would be comforting to observe that there was widespread resistance to this order, but sadly, the overwhelming number of clergy complied; and forty million Christians continued attending their Churches, where swastika flags had replaced altar cloths and Mein Kampf, the Bible.
What really aroused Germans in the 1930s were the glittering successes of Hitler in providing jobs, creating prosperity and moving from one triumph to another in foreign policy. Not many Christians concerned themselves with the handful of pastors, several of whom paid with their life, who resisted the corruption of Christian doctrine and the degradation of Church life.
The Nazification of culture, education, religion, media and indeed, all social and economic activity, was accomplished rapidly, but it endured for such a short period of time that, following the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945, the remnants of the pre-existing culture were still extant and able to be built upon, restoring Germany to its traditional cultural orthodoxy.
However, all of this happened, I believe, as a prophetic forerunner of the direction being taken by current events. The parallels are unmistakeable for anyone caring to look.
Since the 1960s, there has been extraordinary cultural change in Australia, and the Western world generally. Governments have pronounced crisis after crisis in order to keep citizens in a state of fear and confusion, and to increase government control of the people.
Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, The Population Bomb, began with this statement;
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate”.
Of course, he was wrong, but governments believed him; it was an example of government induced uncertainty about the future, promoting insecurity and anxiety – “zero population growth” became the cry – and causing citizens to place their trust in governments and to grant governments more power to overcome the “crisis”.
In the 70s it was the “coming ice age”, which was destined to be upon us, reducing food supplies and wiping out millions of people on the planet. An April 1975 article entitled “The Cooling World” in Newsweek magazine, claimed that there were “ominous signs” that the world’s climate was cooling. The story said;
“The evidence in support of these predictions of global cooling has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it”. The article emphasized sensational and largely unsourced consequences – “resulting famines could be catastrophic”, “drought and desolation,” “the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded”, “droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons,” “impossible for starving peoples to migrate,” “the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age.”
This pattern of proclaiming a forthcoming catastrophe has been repeated ad nauseam and has proved to be an effective tool for keeping citizens in a constant state of anxiety.
In the 80s it was “acid rain”, another horror story of polluted rainfall destroying food supplies – it didn’t happen; the 90s brought us “the AIDS crisis”, which, the experts told us, would inevitable find its way into the heterosexual population and cost millions of lives – it didn’t; 2000 brought us the “millennial bug”, which would result in planes dropping from the sky, no power, no water supply, no access to banks, no food supplies etc., e.g. another “catastrophe” – it didn’t happen and computers went on operating as usual; 2010 saw the embrace of “Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming”, a horror scenario in which, on the one hand, cities would be inundate with flooding as a result of melting polar ice caps and, on the other hand, there would be no rainfall to irrigate crops; the 2020s however, have achieved what none of the other crises could, almost total control of the citizenry through the emergence of Covid 19, a manufactured virus released into the world, creating such government induced panic that national economies have been destroyed in endeavouring to suppress it.
While citizens have been diverted by this succession of “catastrophes” proclaimed by “experts”, cultural change has been achieved gradually, step by step, over the last sixty years, to the extent that Australia, and the modern western world, now reflects a culture that has its roots in Nazi fascism.
The parallels between Nazi Germany and Australia today are remarkable; big business rules, workers are suppressed, the press is conformist and subject to the new ideology, courts are politicised, the sadly few non-conforming churches are persecuted, culture and arts reflect the new atheistic culture, education is corrupted, youth is glorified, immorality and perversion are embraced, small business is destroyed, circus distractions are increased, governments lie, police powers are concentrated and increased.
All of these features were part of the Nazification of Germany, but given the short time of the Nazi era, they didn’t take root in the culture of the German people. However, in Australia, cultural change has been taking place gradually, bit by bit and step by step, always proceeding in the same direction, but cautiously and carefully, so as not to “frighten the horses”, as politicians put it. It has followed the Fabian method of putting a frog into a pot of cold water on a warm stove; by the time the frog realises he is in trouble, he is dead.
The Covid 19 panic has achieved what other manufactured “crises” couldn’t; the destruction of small business and the total control, by government, of the lives of citizens. More importantly, it has led to the ending of the era of the nation state and the inevitable emergence of one world government.
Real power in the world today is concentrated in very few hands; Big Parma, Big Tech, and Big Media rule; control of food, control of medicines, control of information is all in their hands.
These organisations are controlled by men who are trying to satisfy a hunger that only a relationship with God can satisfy. They all have greater wealth, influence and power than anyone before them, but it doesn’t satisfy the hunger within them; they seek more; and more won’t satisfy them either, but only make them more obsessed. Ultimately, they will go mad, like Hitler, Mao and all the other despots before them.
In the meantime, what they will do is to open the door for the False Prophet of scriptures, the anti-Christ, the one coming in his own name who will be accepted by Israel, for a season only, as their Messiah. He will head up a world government that will resolve all debt and bring peace to all. Except, of course, those who recognise him for who he really is, the anti-Christ. Whereas the Nazis had an obsessional hatred of the Jews, the false Messiah will unleash a like persecution of true followers of Jesus Christ. Great persecution of true believers will follow, much as it did the beginning of the church age; many believers will betray one another, a desperate Church will seek to compromise and continue its existence, worshipping the new ruler as if he is God.
All of this is foreshadowed in the scriptures; “the man of lawlessness”, as he is called, “the one opposing and exalting himself against every god being spoken of, or object of veneration, so that he seats himself in the temple of God, proclaiming himself that he is God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4).
This is the ugly reality facing us today. I don’t believe that there is any way of avoiding what is coming; the best we can do is to prepare ourselves for it.
Leave a Reply