| Resources
to aid your Understanding |
| |
"[Obama] can give new impetus to American
foreign policy partly because the reception of him is so extraordinary around
the world. His task will be to develop an overall strategy for America
in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It's
a great opportunity, it isn't just a crisis.'[1]
Henry Kissinger
“Hitler’s aim was first to move the masses
and then, having pried them
loose from their
traditional loyalties and moralities, to impose upon them (with
the hypnotized consent of the majority) a new authoritarian order of his
own devising."[2] Aldous Huxley,
Brave New World Revisited,
1958
"Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect
Barack Obama's pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders
of a socialist group's
Commission
for a Sustainable World Society [Socialist International], which calls
for 'global governance' and says rich countries must shrink their economies...."[3]
"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into
universal, rather than religion-specific, values.... Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in
the inerrancy of the Bible as many evangelicals do...." [4]
Barack Obama
One of my early memories of
post-war Norway was a shadowy concern about Russia -- our neighbor in
the arctic north. Stalin coveted Norway's frost-free ports (warmed by the Gulf
Stream), and many feared the snarling bear on our border.
In contrast, the British press ignored
Stalin's atrocities. In his
Introduction to
Animal Farm, George
Orwell decried the cowardly refusal of British publishers to criticize Communism
-- or to publish his book:
"...it was obvious that there would
be great difficulty in getting it published .... One publisher actually
started by accepting the book, but after making the preliminary arrangements
he decided to consult the Ministry of Information [which apparently]
warned him... against publishing it. Here is an extract from his
letter:
"...it might be regarded as something
which it was highly ill-advised to publish at the present time. If the
fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large
then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow... so
completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators,
that it can apply only to Russia.... Another thing: it would
be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs.
... I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt
give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit
touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are."[5]
It would surely have offended British Communist! By 1943, Marxism
had gained much favor in England, Russia was an ally in the war against Hitler,
and Fabian socialism had become a powerful
political movement among British elites. Like
Antonio Gramsci's more
subtle form of Communism, the Fabians encouraged gradualism, infiltration
and deception rather than bloody revolutions.[6]
This socialist movement fanned out
across Europe and into America under the
lofty banner of solidarity and
common good. Since those two ideals
are rarely defined or candidly explained, few understand what they actually
imply. Ponder this brief summary of their
new meanings:
1.
SOLIDARITY: Diverse people trained to find "common ground." (The
"diversity" is needed to erode the old values) The "common vision" and new values
required for this planned solidarity are most effectively planted in minds through
strategic propaganda and facilitated
group dialogue blending opposing views into an evolving consensus. Aldous
Huxley describes the results in
Brave New World Revisited,
"Assembled in a crowd, people lose their
powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. Their suggestibility
is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgment or will
of their own. ... they are subject to sudden excesses
of rage, enthusiasm and panic. In a word, a
man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of some powerful
intoxicant [See The Dopamine-Driven
Church]. He is a victim of what I have called 'herd-poisoning.'”[7]
2.
COMMON GOOD: The driving vision of solidarity. American individualism
must yield to collective thinking and action. Personal "good" must yield to
the "good" of the collective -- including redistribution of resources.
Though it sounds compassionate, this process destroyed both Russia's middle
class and personal incentive. It left everyone equally poor -- except the elite
rulers who controlled everything.
Yet, socialist change agents still
believe that with a bit more psychology,
sociology, surveillance and
assessments -- all part of today's
re-education -- the dream can
be accomplished. But they are wrong! Whether
subtle or
coercive, the march toward global solidarity
will bring terror and totalitarianism, not peace and plenty. And it will surely
raise hostility toward Christianity, which is incompatible with the rising socialist
system.
As Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto (1848):
"...communism abolishes eternal truths...
and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore
acts in contradiction to all past historical experience....
"The Communists... openly declare that
their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing
social conditions."[8]
Today such change is gradual and alluring rather
than forceful and alarming. Influential Pied Pipers like Rick Warren speed the
process. According to Christianity Today, Rick Warren is pleased to share
Obama's inauguration platform with Bishop Gene Robinson, a homosexual who has
promised to give the prayer without using a Bible. Complimenting Obama, Warren
said,
"President-elect Obama has again demonstrated
his genuine commitment to bringing all Americans of goodwill together
in search of common ground."[9]
The Problem with Human Nature
Since the dawn of time and history,
man's hope for peace has been shattered by vanity, greed, envy, hatred, violence
and war. When people reject God's grace and moral guidelines, only the fear
of reprisals can shape a semblance of order and unity. This illusion of peace
is maintained by fear, not freedom -- by manipulating feelings, not teaching
facts. [See chart] As Aldous Huxley
wrote,
"To be successful a propagandist
must learn how to manipulate these instincts and emotions.... Twenty
years before Madison Avenue embarked upon 'Motivational Research,' Hitler
was systematically exploring and exploiting the secret fears and hopes,
the cravings, anxieties and frustrations of the German masses....
"'All effective propaganda,'
Hitler wrote, 'must be confined to a few bare necessities and then must
be expressed in a few stereotyped formulas.' These stereotyped formulas
must be constantly repeated, for 'only constant repetition will finally
succeed in imprinting an idea upon the memory of a crowd.'”
"Propaganda... teaches us to accept as self-evident matters about which
it would be reasonable to suspend our judgment or to feel doubt. The aim
of the demagogue is to create social coherence under his own leadership."[7]
The cruelties of totalitarianism
are documented by John Noble in his book, I found God
in Soviet Russia. Trapped in East Germany by the Russian occupying
forces in 1945, the 21-year-old Noble was imprisoned without trial. Through
years of starvation and relocations, he finally ended up in a slave-labor camp
in arctic Russia. There, in the midst of horrible suffering, he would encourage
others to trust God for strength to persevere.
After
his miraculous release ten years later, he described the decadence of the ravaging
Russian armies that occupied East Germany until 1990:
"I had begun to discover, during those first
few months of Russian occupation... what man without God can come to.
Although I could not then comprehend why the Russians conducted themselves
as they did, the dreadful events of Black Sunday in Dresden, May 6, 1945,
gave me my first inkling of the moral erosion that had taken place
among the Soviet people.
"Under cover of darkness, neighbors continued
to slip over to our house for refuge. The tales they had to tell made us
sick. Several of the women were hysterical.... Their lust spent in rape,
the Red soldiers turned to looting...."
"...when you remove God from a society, you
remove the basis for a moral code...."[10]
John Noble, I Found God in Soviet Russia
Lust and lawlessness! These
timeless signs of man's depravity apart from God have already permeated our
post-Christian culture! Consider the planned homosexual "pig-sex" orgy
at Washington, D.C.'s Double-Day Hotel during Obama's inauguration festivities![11]
Sickening as it sounds, the recent
assaults on innocent Jewish citizens in Europe and America are just as disturbing.
What a way to start the new year! The Western world, which proclaims justice
and tolerance for all, was suddenly swept up in a wave of mass rage that brought
memories of racist lynchings and the medieval Inquisition. Author Mark Steyn
documents some of the atrocities in his recent article, "The
'oldest hatred' lives, from Gaza to Florida:"
"In Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators yell
'You are the brothers of pigs!,' and a protester complains to his interviewer
that 'Hitler didn't do a good job.'
"In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, 'You need a big
oven, that's what you need!'
"In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, 'Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!'
"In Toulouse [France] a synagogue is firebombed... a Jewish man is savagely
assaulted by 20 youths taunting, 'Palestine will kill the Jews.'... a Jewish
schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, 'Jews must die.'
"In Brussels, a Molotov cocktail is hurled at a synagogue; in Antwerp, lit
rags are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home."[12]
Never mind the legal innocence of these Jewish
civilians in Europe. Under the twisted sense of justice that accompanies such
hatred, selective ethnic guilt is once again a reality in collective minds.
So while Jews are attacked with abandon, few dare criticize Muslims, Hindus
or homosexuals and risk the social reprisals for politically incorrect expressions.
What does this tell us about the rising New World Order?
There
are many kinds of "Jews" and "Christians" these days. While most drift with
the compromising currents in today's amoral world, others stand firm on the
unchanging Scriptures they love. While the latter are viewed as misfits, President-Elect
Obama's view of "Christianity" fits right into the vision of global solidarity:
“I believe there are many paths to the same
place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that
we are connected as a people."[13]
Christians who avoid those merging paths are
likely to face the world's wrath. It simply can't understand such reluctance
to conform. Uncompromising commitment to God makes no sense to those who
don't know Him! So the world tries to explain it in their own misleading
terms. As Pastor Rick Warren told
Stephen Colbert,
"A fundamentalist is somebody who stops listening. There
are fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist Jews, fundamentalist Muslims....
It's an attitude that doesn't listen to anyone else."[14]
That's not true, unless you define "listen" as
the process toward dialectical
consensus, which many do. In that context, Warren's strange statement in
a 2006 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer makes sense:
"Warren predicts that fundamentalism,
of all varieties, will be 'one of the big enemies of the 21st century.'
... 'Muslim fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism....'"[15]
In a
May 2005 interview with the Pew Forum on Religion, Warren defined this persistent
"enemy:"
"... they are such a minority; there
aren't that many Fundamentalists left in America ... Now the word 'fundamentalist'
actually comes from a document in the 1920s called the
Five Fundamentals of the Faith. And it is a very legalistic, narrow
view of Christianity."[16]
That "legalistic, narrow view" is God-given
faith
in these five essential Truths: (1) the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, (2)
the virgin birth, (3) His atonement for sin through the cross, (4) His resurrection,
and (5) the inerrancy of His Word. But those fundamentals are no longer acceptable
in many churches. As Jesus said,
"If you were of the world, the world would love
its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the
world, therefore the world hates you.... If they persecuted Me they will
persecute you... for they do not know the One who sent Me." John 15:19-21
One such martyr was Ivan [Vanya] Moiseyev, an
eighteen-year-old Christian inducted into the Russian Red Army in 1970. Two
years later he was tortured to death by Communist commanders for gently refusing
to deny His Lord. Apart from God's sustaining grace during the years of unthinkable
torture, he would have died much earlier. Perhaps this glimpse of Ivan's response
to the first sign of hostility will remind us of the joy of following Jesus
-- no matter what the cost!
"...it
was incredible to him [a Red Army Sergeant] that any Soviet youth could
have been so thoroughly poisoned by religion.
"Zalivako
was not finished. 'It is evident that you resist teaching, Moiseyev, and
the advice of your superiors. That is a concern to me. You are in need of
a lesson. Since you are fond of praying on your knees, I shall give you
an opportunity for constructive socialist labor in that position. You are
to wash the barrack’s drill hall and all the corridors on your knees....
You will work all night. Perhaps an exercise of this nature, and before
your comrades, might help to persuade you to be teachable. You will have
opportunity to consider if you wish to cling to your anti-Soviet views.
Dismissed.'...
"...the
news of a believer in the unit had passed through the whole company....
Fast upon the first story came the second, that the Polit-Ruk had set Moiseyev
to scrubbing the enormous barrack hall with a small hand brush and a bucket.
"Incredibly, he was in good humor,
singing and smiling as he worked in spite of continuous interruptions by
officers who called him into their offices to harass him. By lunch,
soldiers were drifting into the hall... watching him work, listening to
the quiet hymns he sang with such evident joy. He was a mystery."
[17]
