Tuesday, February 16, 2021

The World System's Utopian Fantasies & the Resistance awaiting a Better World


I'd like to arrange several elements which we'll reference during this reflection.  We'll be referencing sources including Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, the novels 1984 and Animal Farm by Orwell, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, an obscure Walt Disney film from 1979 called "The Black Hole", Tolkien's Middle Earth universe, and C.S. Lewis' The Pilgrims Regress (1933). Let's begin.

One may browse through a hundred news articles a day or reflect on the situations facing humanity with great trembling. And one may reflect back upon history to consider how history repeats itself.  And one may search these things out to attempt to understand what is the actual truth of things in our realm of existence. 

Every time we read a news article or a book we're reaching out for some small piece of ultimate reality.  And for myself personally, though I don't know if this applies to others, I am attempting to piece these realities together to perceive the larger picture.

Piecing life together, and how to understand it, involves understanding philosophies, modern and past, histories of the Earth, the various disciplines of science, world religions, politics, sociology, anthropology, and so on and so forth. One gathers this information and begins to search for the meta-story behind the face information. Some discount it based on their own philosophy, I cannot.  

So what is the story? From my perspective, I see a spiritual reality playing itself behind the material. I find the cosmic battle, which takes place behind the face of all we see. An ongoing struggle between good and evil. It's waged on the seven hills of society, which include: arts & entertainment, business, education, family, government, media, and religion.

This cosmic battle is referenced frequently by Del Tackett in the landmark series "The Truth Project."  We also see the cosmic battle referenced by the three women in A Wrinkle in Time. The battle is referenced, between darkness and light on the various planets throughout the galaxy in this universe. The battle is also expressed in the struggle of Middle Earth against the forces of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings. The struggle plays itself out through A Pilgrim's Regress as well. 

So how do we track down this battle in the material? This is increasingly difficult. I find myself reading a dozen articles from various news sources and asking myself one question: "How on Earth am I supposed to know what is true and what is false?"  

The great power of our era has a simple name: propaganda. Propaganda expresses itself increasingly through television news, print and online news, public education, arts & entertainment, and even religion and the business world.  Particularly in the United States we see a propaganda war being waged between two ideological perspectives, progressivism and conservatism in their various forms.  And for the average person attempting to discern actual reality, well, the difficulty is seeing past propaganda and ideology to actual reality.  

The new trend in the ideological struggle is that of censorship, demonization, cancel culture, character assassination, and de-platforming.  One ideology begins to silence the opposing ideologies. If one can control the spread of information, then one can control the entire narrative of the society.  

This is not new in history by any means. The battle has simply gone from 95 theses being nailed to a church door, to the printing press' results, dueling newspapers federalists vs. anti-federalists in print, in the early times of the American experiment, to the 1960s to the 1990s it was television networks and newspapers, today it's expressed via these older mediums, and increasingly in the internet sphere.  

But before we get bogged down in the ideological struggles, we step back to reference the cosmic battle. 

What is going on behind the news articles and talking heads? 

The idea of progress is paramount.  Progress, is the concept that over time humanity is slowly improving technologically, scientifically, medically, philosophically, intellectually and morally to the point of utopia. 

The spiritual concept of progress is reflected in the tower of the Babel. 'We will make this Earth into a paradise and we don't need God's help to do it.' I once shared this concept in my mind.  'We don't need God, and we will create a paradise with our sciences and technologies, and God is irrelevant, and we're going to show God how much we don't need him.'

Quite similar to the tower of babel.  They would 'make a name for themselves.' They would ascend the heights, and build higher and higher to reach the perfect heavenly state, with faces turned away from the face of God; instead faces shining with human pride. 

This is the dream of the human system as it exists now.  It goes all the way back to the garden of Eden, in which the serpent told Adam and Eve that they would be like god if they listened to him.

And that is the voice behind this utopian ideology.  We're going to have it all, and build it apart from God.  

But from the perspective which I come, the Christian perspective, I see a hidden goal behind this glorious scheme.  This endgame for the world system, this new world order does not actually look like a paradise for man. 

It looks like something quite different.  The end result is much more similar to a planet like Camazotz, from A Wrinkle in Time.  A planet where everything is exactly the same.  All is equality.  All is controlled.  And free thought is unacceptable.  Where the brain "IT" controls all aspects of society.  And the residents has been stripped of all free will, and made into robots.

Speaking of robots, in Disney's The Black Hole we find a good metaphor for this concept.  A madman, on a massive space vessel, hanging at the edge of a black hole, has turned the entire crew into robots, controlled by him.  And this madman is obsessed with the vast nothingness of the black hole before him.  The crew tried to stop him, but they failed.  And now he will bring all of humanity into the black hole with him.  He's assured that this black hole will lead to some sort of paradise, some sort of new awakening for man.  But it leads into a place of fire and death. And the main characters must fight tooth and nail to escape this demented madman, and his delusional reality.  They must not go into the black hole with him. 

The endgame for our enemy, the Satan, is to turn humanity into robots, through a tool called by the Bible, "the mark of the beast." And this mark seems to remove human free will. They become robots, controlled completely by the Satan and his world system. They can no longer choose anymore.  That is Satan's endgame. Total control.  The lure on the hook is secular utopia for humanity.  The latest vessel to make it there is socialism, in the past it's been communism, providential kings and queens, secular revolutions, military conquests, dictatorships, and religious fanaticisms. 

In A Wrinkle in Time, in the 2003 cinematic adaptation, in the capital city of Camazotz every aspect of society, the movie theatres, the newspapers, the restaurants, and the businesses all include the word "It" in the titles of them.  This references the subtle influence the "It" being has behind all aspects of society, how all seven hills are completely dominated by the "IT" and it's ideology of total uniformity. That is the Satan's goal in any society, is to so influentially dominate the society's spheres of power that only his ideology wins out.  

And Satan is fundamentally the madman of The Black Hole, doomed, insane, twisted and mangled by his own rebellion and the judgment he received from God, his only goal left is to deceive as many as possible into the black hole pit where he is doomed to reside forever.  He is the madman promising paradise but unable to provide it, and hoping to destroy as many as he can with him. He's the ultimate kamikaze lunatic. 

But the goal of the "It" behind societal influence is to no longer need to influence anything. Once totalitarianism is achieved, well, no need to influence, or have to fight to influence anything.  Control is achieved. If you disagree, you die. 

This concept is spelled out in Animal Farm and 1984.  The ideological "lock step" is mandatory in those societies, and anyone showing any sort of free thought must be arrested, tortured, and forced into an undying love for the state's will. This is reflected in the final scene of 1984, in which the main character watches the screen displaying big brothers system, and he smiles, clapping his hands, weeping with joy and love for the system he has been taught to worship. 

The road to 1984 is of course paved by means of Huxley's Brave New World.  Self-seeking pleasure, technology, scientific progress, and consumerism nullify and stupify the human will to resist tyranny. And uniformity is dictated not by an all-powerful state but by the all-powerful cultural trends that dominate the society.  And out of this uniformity and lockstep in culture, and decreased watchfulness by the minute men and women of society, the pathway for increased control by the state is paved.

The spirit of the Age referred to in C.S. Lewis' the Pilgrims Regress is what reinforces the growing lockstep and difficulty of dissenting. There are little philosophical tricks and emotional games played within the lies that dictate what must be believed in the particular era of society. Usually, the spirit of the age appeals to emotion, while the truth appeals to intellect. Which will win every time? Emotion every time sadly. If you feel that what you've been told is right, you'll fight for it, and if you believe people who disagree are evil, you'll fight twice as hard. Viciously.  And as that momentum grows in the culture, the stream begins flowing so intensely down river that it's hard to stop and say, "Hold on a minute what about these facts? A. B. and C." The emotion is in control. The stream pushes toward the goal being guided behind the scenes by the Satan, thus dissent becomes increasingly difficult. Even more, swimming against the current becomes viewed as insane, dangerous, and evil.  

I imagine that when the time comes for the anti-Christ world system to take center stage, and the tribulation saints are slaughtered, chanting crowds will be absolutely convinced that what they are doing is completely righteous and good, they will feel 100% that they are in the moral right for removing such evil bigots and haters from society, to pave the way toward utopia.  They will be assured of their own self-righteousness in destroying them. That is the power of propaganda, and hatred. 

But there is more at work in the world than the will of evil and the world system.  There is also this peculiar resistance movement within all societies everywhere.  It is a rather strange resistance movement.  

People of the system prefer to not look upon it at all, it makes them uncomfortable.  So in one sense they are often quite invisible to the larger system. And their goals do not align with the system at all, the system craves power, influence, wealth, pleasure, and control. But these resistance cells don't seem to crave these things. If they do, they are used as caricatures, to slander the real resistance movers as judgmental and bigoted and selfish and evil. 

But for the real remnant resistance, they are not well understood.  They go unchallenged much of the time, sometimes treated as innocent bystanders or neutral parties if they don't make too much noise, but if they begin to cause a ruckus and an anomaly in the system appears around them, then they are targeted for destruction by the system. 

This was most perfectly displayed when a certain Jewish peasant named Jesus Christ the messiah was crucified by the system.  Yet paradoxically his complete destruction in the "cross event" is actually what birthed 3 days later the most severe anomaly yet known in the history of the world system. A dead man appeared alive again, and gave a power to his many followers, that then burst forth into the Roman empire and across the face of the world, guided by this mysterious "Spirit" within them, that seemed to instruct them where to go and what to do.

So often times what appears to be the destruction of these resistance cells of the Spirit will blow up in the face of the world system and become detonation points for the expansion of the resistance and it's influence to new areas of society and to greater numbers of people held in proper bondage to the system.  Quite fascinating.  

These resistance fighters seem able to preserve society in a semi-stable state throughout history past and present.  And they seem often to be the ones at the forefront of resistance to tyranny in it's various forms.  

So we see this constant cosmic battle between the world system and these peculiar resistance fighters, and often times it's tid to tat, a horrible world war, a madman who exterminates millions of Jews, yet then from out of this darkness springs this army of light that invades the madman's empire and overturns it completely, setting free millions and millions from tyranny and granting the world safety once again.  Always some great depression followed by a peculiar great awakening, a time of moral depravity followed by dedicated temperance movements, misery in tyranny followed by enlightened republics and democracies, dead churches breaking forth to great church revivals, and so on and so forth.

These peculiar resistance fighters seem to constantly point to a new reality breaking forth into the world system that they call "the kingdom of God."  They point to the coming hope of a "new heavens and new Earth" where they will find a paradise similar to the original Eden.

So we find two systems at work, and they have two separate goals: for the world system the goal is a worldly utopia in which all find complete equality in every way, where man has transcended above and beyond God, and has shown God why he was wrong all along. 

And for the resistance on Earth, the messiah's blood washed ones, the goal is one in which humanity is reconstituted to it's creator, the God of the universe, who loves them, and will then allow the old earth to pass away, and will remake a new heaven and new Earth, in which will be a paradise called "the new city of God" where humanity and it's creator are restored to right relationship forever. God's perfect reality restored.

Now, if the material naturalists are right and there really is no god and no design and nothing to the universe but time + matter + chance then the hoped for worldly utopia is really humanity's only hope. They have to find some way scientifically and medically to make the human form immortal, and then form the broken human society into some sort of utopia.  That is their dream and only hope. 

But, if the resistance fighters are right, and God is real, and God's system is really the default position for all life, then the world system is setting up not a utopia, but a pyramid of control, a new order, upon which the promised coming "anti-Christ" will place himself atop, to control the entire world, promising a paradise, but then betraying this promise, and bringing about total war, complete control, and the final removal of all human free will through "the mark."  Thus, the only hope for humanity is to be restored to right relationship with God, through this ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ, to be free from "sin" the sort of crust of the old system that provokes rebellion to God, and embrace the counter-system mindset in this world, living a peculiar sort of purity. So after passing through the vail of death, these washed ones will join in a new God-driven system, while those who have rejected the God-system are quarantined in a place of disconnection from God and judgment, known as "hell" or "outer darkness."  Very interesting.  

Can you see the prime reality?  Can you see it through all the propaganda, through all the lies, and beyond the material world?  If you can see it, and are beginning to see it, I beg of you, to join our resistance.  Yes, I must confess, I am indeed part of the peculiar resistance to the world system.

And I ask you to join us, today. For there is coming in these last times, a final great awakening, before our departure.  After which the world will achieve it's most sought after goal; religion without god, wrong and right reversed, utopia of a sort on earth, their god in total control! But in the end comes the rude revelation that it was all a lie, socialism, communism, shared wealth, shared work, community, tolerance. It was all a lie. The great reversal takes place.  The anti-Christ betrays them, the world sinks into chaos. The truth is revealed, it was all really about one thing in the end: control. The mark reveals "IT" the removal of free will. True socialism. Total control. Humanity become robots. 

I don't want anyone to go through that terrible time, though there is hope even then, to join the resistance, but the cost in that time of complete evil is to die for Christ.  

Instead I hope you find your way back home, to God's system, and God's design, and God's structure of reality. Freedom. Free-will. Choice. Choose to love the truth and hate the lie.  Love then takes over, and God's law becomes beautiful to us, when they were once repugnant. The laws of love and truth become majestic to us. God's gift was always free will. Choice.  And in the new universe, choice remains. But in the old, it is finally snuffed out completely.

My goal, the goal of every servant of the messiah, and member of the five groupings of missional ministry, is to get you home safely.  Which is why I write this today.  But, the choice is ultimately yours.  Truth, or lies, pretty lies, or hard truth, redefining good and evil, or seeing them as they truly are. God's gift is... choice. 

Will you join the resistance?  Or will you gather with the tower of Babylon? Your choice.  

Make it a good one human.  We will continue the battle. Your armor is waiting, if you'll join us.