Are We Living in Orwellian Times?

Many people today are comparing our time with the one described in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Like Orwell’s Big Brother state, “Big Tech” companies are actively trying to destroy free speech that is critical of mainstream media and government official approved “news.” For instance, Google has attempted to erase history,¹ is carefully removing legitimate sources of information from its search results because they differ ideologically,² falsely labeling those sources as “fake news”³ or falsely identifying their content as “dangerous and misleading.”⁴ Not only this, but “Big Tech”/”Big Brother” has been increasingly overstepping their boundaries with respect to the personal data of their users. We are all being spied on,⁵ and many of us are changing our behavior to avoid being banned/shunned/judged by others and “Big Tech”/”Big Brother.”⁶

Given all of this, the comparison seems fitting. Yet it isn’t complete.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is concerned with more than the metastasization of the government into an intrusive surveillance state powered by advanced technology. It’s concerned with human psychology. This is not only evident in its assessment of how totalitarian governments manipulate their citizens’ thinking via the deletion of history, redirecting the anger of its citizens toward imaginary enemies rather than the state, encouraging “group think,” and punishing individual, critical thinking. Nineteen Eighty-Four more subtly deals with the psychology of a person who is neither a complete rebel – as was Winston Smith’s lover Julia – nor a complete government lackey – as was Syme, the lexicographer of the novel’s fictional land Oceania.

Winston Smith is somewhere between complete rebellion and complete submission to the state. As the novel progresses, one is struck by the fact that Winston must literally die as a rebel, or figuratively die – i.e. lose his individuality, hopes, aspirations, critical thinking, opinions – as a propagandized, brainwashed, and amorphous cog in the sociopolitical machine that is Big Brother. One cannot stay in the center; he must die one death or the other.

This perhaps explains Nineteen Eighty-Four’s confused ending. For on the one hand, Winston succumbs to the government, snitches on his lover, and becomes a brainwashed ward of the state. Yet, on the other hand, this only occurs after the government spends a lot of time and energy and resources trying to capture him, torture the truth out of him, and “re-educate” him into submission. One can view 1984 as either decrying the hopelessness of a life lived under a totalitarian regime, or as pointing to the key to dismantling a totalitarian regime (viz. Unyielding civil disobedience rooted in an appreciation of one’s humanity and all that comes with it – love, hate, beauty, ugliness, art, creation, destruction, physical pleasure, etc).

Orwell did not seem to know the answer to the question of how one should live under a tyrannical government. The acute reader is left with a sense of horror not at the novel ending with Winston becoming a brainwashed ward of the state, but with the novel leaving one on his own. Winston experienced great things – love, sex, good food, laughter, camaraderie – but this didn’t keep him from folding when tortured by the state. Will the reader do the same under similar circumstances? Will the reader follow a different path, and resist even if it costs him his life?

What else can one expect from Orwell’s atheistic, quasi-existentialist⁷worldview? In such a view, it is the individual’s decision that determines all things. There is no God. Consequently, there is no hope.

Orwell’s Opposition to Roman Catholocism

Sadly, and rather ironically, for an anti-Communist novel⁸ Nineteen Eighty-Four seems to identify religion in general, and Romanism in particular, as a means of suppressing critical thinking and political dissidence. Lindsay Dowty explains –

Orwell confronts the idea that fascist governments dispel religion to keep the people from unifying together behind it, yet they humor the Church as a means of giving the lower class a reason to stay in the lower class. In Animal Farm, Orwell makes minor allusions to his take on religion in the bigger scheme of a totalitarian society, much like he does in his following novel, 1984.

Orwell’s 1984 is as much about an oppressive government as it is about losing faith within a theocracy. Winston’s continual questioning of Big Brother’s existence and his need for validation through others points to a plot in which a man struggles to come to terms with his disbelief in God. Winston is perpetually on the search for some inclination from coworkers or friends that they do not truly believe in the Party, as well.⁹

Orwell’s Marx-esque beliefs about religion arose, in part, from his observation of the Roman Church state’s collaboration with fascism.¹⁰ For Orwell, it seems, the individual stood between two oppressive regimes. This essentially means that the individual doesn’t hope in anyone beyond himself, as he alone is responsible for saving himself.

And to some extent, he was right. Secular and religious authoritarianism are anti-Christian and, therefore, anti-human. Thus, in Orwell’s Oceania enjoying the divinely bestowed pleasures of human existence – food, sex, art, love, conversation – is illegal. Engaging in free thinking, free trade, free enterprise – these are all illegal as well. In the place of the Sovereign God, secular and religious authoritarians set up a representative who believes himself to be, in some sense, divine. And such authoritarianism was truly definitive of the Christian faith, then our situation would be as hopeless as that of Winston, Julia, and Orwell himself.

Christians Have Hope

Despite having experienced much of what the state had deemed illegal, and having thereby come to experience the good gifts of God given to all of his creatures, Winston is broken by Ingsoc, the ruling party of Oceania. The threat of death seems to drive him to abandon whatever vestiges of hope he had in his ability to successfully revolt – even if only in his mind – against Ingsoc.

Could Winston have continued to rebel? Could he have brought about the eventual revolution of Oceania’s scattered hidden dissenters?

That is unanswerable.

What we do know is that Winston’s plight is that of every man outside of Christ. Fallen man rightly sees many injustices, but seems to forget about all God has given to him that is good. What is good is taken for granted, while what is not good is amplified and used as an excuse for fallen man to continue on in his life of rebellion against God. And nothing temporal, material, physical, or social brings relief to him as he contemplates his hopeless existence. As Solomon declared –

…I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.¹¹

The answer is not in a reformed government. The answer is not in a new government formed by fallible statesmen. The answer is not found in institutional religion.

The answer is found in Christ alone.

For in Christ, one can come to understand the world properly. Christ is at the center of all things, upholding the universe by the Word of his power,12 seated and sovereignly reigning over the whole of existence and all of its parts,¹³ directing the course of history to this one end: The glorification of the Triune God through the gracious salvation of his people, the just condemnation of his enemies, and the renewing of all of creation.¹⁴ The apostle Paul declares –

…we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

[ . . .]

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.¹⁵

We strive to honor God by being salt and light in every corner of this sin-darkened planet, but we ultimately know that there is only King who will usher in a righteousness that will fill the earth – Christ Jesus the King of kings and Lord of lords. We know that Christ will judge the living and the dead, and that we, Christians, have escaped judgment not because God has turned a blind eye to our sins, but because he has placed our sins on his Son on the tree of Calvary. Before the eyes of our understanding, in real time, we see that God did not spare his own Son from the penalty for sin due to us. Therefore, we are assured that the God of all the earth will not spare the unjust tyrants.We a have a living hope, one of which we have been given a forestaste time and again throughout history.

Unlike Orwell, Winston, and Julia, Christians have hope.

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¹ See Bokhari, Allum, “Google Is Still Erasing Breitbart Stories About Joe Biden from Search,” Breitbart, https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/11/03/google-is-still-erasing-breitbart-stories-about-joe-biden-from-search, Nov 3, 2020; Widburg, Andrea, “Google/YouTube is erasing all evidence of election fraud,” American Thinker, Dec 10, 2020, [https://www.americanthinker.com/ blog/2020/12/googleyoutube_is_erasing_all_evidence_of_election_fraud.html][1]; Parker, Tom, “Google Play deletes over 150,000 Robinhood app reviews after frustrated users leave one-star ratings,” Reclaim the Net, Jan 28, 2021, https://reclaimthenet.org/google-play-removes-robinhood-reviews/.

[1]: https://www.americanthinker.com/ blog/2020/12/googleyoutube_is_erasing_all_evidence_of_election_fraud.html

²See Huff, Ethan, “Google executive admits search engine suppresses “right-wing” advertising,” CyberWar, Oct 22, 2020, https://cyberwar.news/2020-10-22-google-executive-says-search-engine-suppresses-right-wing-advertising.html#; Epstein, Robert, “The New Censorship,” U.S. News, Jun 22, 2016, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-22/google-is-the-worlds-biggest-censor-and-its-power-must-be-regulated; See Keach, Sean, “NOT RIGHT Google accused of ‘left-wing bias’ as study finds JUST 11% of ‘Top Stories’ are from right-leaning news sites,” The Sun, May 13, 2019, https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/9062348/google-left-wing-bias-right-leaning-news/.

³See Hirsen, James, “Mainstream Media Uses 'Fake News' to Censor Conservative Views,” Newsmax, Nov 21, 2016, https://www.newsmax.com/JamesHirsen/facebook-fake-news-social-media-zuckerberg/2016/11/21/id/759946/.

⁴See Maas, Christina, “YouTube deletes videos of doctors testifying in Senate Homeland Committee as ‘coronavirus misinformation’”, Jan 29, 2021, https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-deletes-videos-of-doctors-testifying-in-senate-homeland-committee/.

⁵See Rathnam, Lavanya, “PRISM, Snowden and Government Surveillance: 6 Things You Need To Know,” CloudWards, July 6, 2020, https://www.cloudwards.net/prism-snowden-and-government-surveillance/.

⁶See Belanger, Lydia, “10 Ways Technology Hijacks Your Behavior,” Entrepreneur, April 3, 2018, https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/311284.

⁷Orwell opposed Sartrean existentialism, but expressed a form of individualism reminiscent of Albert Camus’ iteration of existentialism. As Douglas Burnham explains –

…in The Rebel, reminiscent of Orwell’s Animal Farm, one of the first points he makes is the following: “The slave starts by begging for justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He too wants to dominate” (Camus 2000b:31). The problem is that while man genuinely rebels against both unfair social conditions and, as Camus says, against the whole of creation, nevertheless in the practical administration of such revolution, man comes to deny the humanity of the other in an attempt to impose his own individuality.

(“Existenialism,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/existent, Accessed Feb 1, 2021.)

The two, however, were not without their notable differences. For more on this, see Brunskill, Ian, “The Gallic Orwell,” The American Interest, Vol. 6 No. 1, Sept 1, 2010, https://www.the-american-interest.com/2010/09/01/the-gallic-orwell/.

⁸See Morris, Shawnna, “Orwell’s “1984”: How to Misread a Classic,” Foundation for Economic Education, June 8, 2019, https://fee.org/articles/orwell-s-1984-how-to-misread-a-classic/.

⁹“1984 as a Religious Critique,” Trinity College: The First Year Papers (2010-Present), (Hartford: Trinity Publications, 2017), 2-3.

¹⁰ Dowty explains –

At the time, the Catholic Church was collaborating with the fascist governments of Italy and Spain due to its vehement opposition to socialism and democratic ideology. As an advocate for democratic socialism and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell began to view the Church as its own authoritarian regimen…the same way, he believed those worshipping the Church were succumbing to a fad of “power worshipping” – or, idolizing those with power opposed to the morals and ethics of the institution wielding that power…

(1984 as a Religious Critique, 1.)

¹¹ Ecc 4:1-3.

¹² cf. Heb 1:3.

¹³ cf. Eph 1:20-22.

¹⁴ cf. Rom 8:18-25; 1st Cor 15:20-28; Phil 2:4-11.

¹⁵2 Cor 4:7-18.

In his book A Genealogy of Morals, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche makes a distinction between what he calls noble morality and slave morality. Morality, he argues, began with superior men marking out traits and abilities that were not common to all but only the smaller class of kings, warriors, artists, musicians. Inferior men, however, were mentally and physically incapable of what the nobles were capable of doing. Consequently, they resented their superiors and sought revenge against them. They enacted revenge by inverting good and evil, thereby condemning all that they were incapable of being and doing as evil. As Nietzsche explains –

The slave-revolt in morality begins by resentment itself becoming creative and giving birth to values — the resentment of such beings, as real reaction, the reaction of deeds, is impossible to, and as nothing but an imaginary vengeance will serve to indemnify. Whereas, on the one hand, all noble morality takes its rise from a triumphant Yea-saying to one's self, slave-morality will, on the other hand, from the very beginning, say No to something “exterior,” “different,” “not-self;” this No being its creative deed. This re-version of the value-positing eye — this necessary glance outwards instead of backwards upon itself —is part of resentment. Slave-morality, in order to arise, needs, in the first place, an opposite and outer world; it needs, physiologically speaking, external irritants, in order to act at all; — its action is, throughout, reaction.1

[…]

...let people ask themselves, from the standpoint of resentment morality as to who is “evil?” Answering in all severity: just the “good” one of the opposite morality, even the noble man, the powerful and the ruling one, —but reversely colored, reversely interpreted, reversely looked at through the venom-eye of resentment.2

Ironically, however, Dave Robinson notes it is also the case that –

…Nietzsche has often been adopted as the great-grandfather of…recent postmodern beliefs. Indeed, many postmodernist philosophers, like Derrida and Foucault, have written essays that forcefully make this claim.3

This is ironic because it is precisely the work of Derrida and Foucault that serves as the philosophical foundation for critical race theory, a theoretical framework that, essentially, inverts Nietzsche’s theory of morality. Rather than being “supermen” of a “higher” and “nobler spirit” than what Nietzsche kindly referred to as “the nonbred human being[s], the mishmash human being[s], the chandala [i.e. “untouchables”],”4 Nietzsche’s children have dedicated themselves to condemning the ideas and behaviors of privileged and non-oppressed social groups. They have sought to obtain power by the very means Nietzsche identifies as decadent and vile – condemning the ideas and actions of those in power precisely because one is incapable of producing them.

Foucault’s Emblem: Sympathy for the “Oppressed”

As Foucault scholar Johanna Oksala explains, “Foucault began from a relentless hatred of bourgeois society and culture and with a spontaneous sympathy for marginal groups such as the mad, homosexuals, and prisoners.”5 Hence Gary Gutting, in part, characterizes Michel Foucault as

…fiercely independent and committed from the beginning to his own and others’ freedom. His hatred of oppression flared out in the midst of the most complex and erudite discussions. He saw even his most esoteric intellectual work as contributing to a ‘toolbox’ for those opposing various tyrannies. And he had the effect he desired: he was a hero of the anti-psychiatry movement, of prison reform, of gay liberation…6

This sympathy for “the oppressed” in the history of Western Civilization also extended into flesh and blood political activism for a period of time in his life, further distancing himself from his philosophical forefather Nietzsche. For as Guy Eglat informs us –

Nietzsche’s attack on the idea of equality and its political manifestations in democratic ideology was relentless. Throughout his corpus, Nietzsche can be found attacking, again and again, the notion of “human dignity,” the idea that all human beings enjoy equal rights (“a symptom of a disease”), and the basic idea and value of the moral equality of all.7

How, then, could Foucault – a radical defender of what Nietzsche despised (viz. the unwashed masses) – be inspired by Nietzsche? Eglat argues that Foucault was influenced by the critical methodologies created and employed by Nietzsche throughout his writing.

Foucault was greatly taken by Nietzsche’s emphasis on the historical nature of human existence and on how central notions of how we think about and relate to ourselves and others—notions such as sanity and madness, sexuality, normality and abnormality—are constructed by various social institutions at different times and under different conditions. He was also arguably influenced by Nietzsche’s emphasis on power as a central explanatory concept by means of which we can conceptualize the working of the various institutional elements that in any given historical context produce the practices and theories that shape our self-understandings (though Nietzsche was more focused on the psychology, rather than the sociology, of power).8

Thus, Foucault abstracted these ways of reading and analyzing ideas from Nietzsche, while rejecting the German philosopher’s anti-democratic, anti-equality, anti-advocacy-on-behalf-of-the-weak ideas.

Derrida’s Departure

Derrida was not an activist, but he shares in common with Foucault the same desire to, at the very least, problematize the distinction between a number of binary concepts employed freely and repeatedly in Nietzsche’s writing. Nietzsche’s corpus is rife with binary oppositions that form the basis of his thinking. In his earliest major publication, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche argued that all of life is a struggle between two primal forces – the Dionysian and the Apollonian. The Dionysian was irrational, disordered, chaotic, sensuous, earthly; the Apollonian was rational, ordered, harmonious, intellectual, cerebral. Similarly, in his book A Genealogy of Morals, as has been mentioned above, Nietzsche argued that moral thinking occurs between two irreconcilable personality types – the master and the slave, or the nobleman and the plebeian. These distinctions, we must note, were not divorced from their concrete political forms.

As Paul Patton explains, Derrida thought “that philosophy is by nature a form of political activity.”9 Yet he did not begin writing about politics explicitly until much later in his career as an academic. Patton writes –

Derrida’s overtly political philosophy developed alongside his involvement in the campaign against apartheid, his defence of imprisoned intellectuals and writers and his increasingly forceful public positions on issues such as the treatment of illegal immigrants, the politics of reconciliation, the death penalty, terrorism and the behaviour of rogue states. He developed detailed analyses of ethico-political concepts such as hospitality, forgiveness, friendship, justice, democracy, equality and sovereignty. He collaborated with his former critic Jürgen Habermas in defence of a certain idea of Europe. He affirmed his support for Enlightenment ideal of equality and the rule of law, as well as for changes to the international political system aimed at diminishing the power of state sovereignty in favour of a more cosmopolitan global order.10

Thus, while indebted to Nietzsche and his progeny (in particular, the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger11), Derrida nonetheless did not follow “the Madman’s”12 thinking in its entirety. Rather, he departed from his predecessor in search of a radical form of democracy of the kind that Nietzsche utterly despised.13

Resentful Offspring are, Nonetheless, Offspring

It seems to be that like the prodigal son, the postmodernists took their father’s inheritance, ran off with it, and wasted it on riotous philosophizing. They wound up in the same pen as the utilitarian hedonists feeding on the “pig philosophy” of democracy and liberalism, and subsequently inspiring the radicalism of the critical race theorists, social justice warriors, and neo-Marxists now advocating for the deconstruction of the very social concepts that Nietzsche sought to valorize, viz. individualism, freedom, responsibility, meritocracy, and so on. Have they, then, lost all connection to their father?

In a word, no. Their surface level concerns are, of course, diametrically opposed to one another. This much is obvious. However, their underlying presupposition is the same. Irrespective of the postmodernists’ attempts to rid themselves of anything vaguely resembling the Logos of God, an omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient and transcendent mind responsible for the unity of all creation and its history, they nevertheless consistently wound up affirming with Nietzsche that all human relations are reducible to inter- and intra-human relations of power. For these children of the madman, what drives the history of the universe is not a divinely orchestrated concatenation of interrelated events that will culminate in the glorification of the Triune God as he exerts his perfect and just rule over all that he has made, but an indefatigable “will to power” that has only one goal in mind – its own perpetuation.

Is it any wonder we are seeing these offspring doing all that they can — from irrationally arguing their case to setting buildings ablaze and toppling national monuments — to exercise, and thereby obtain even more, power?

Were Nietzsche around to see the antics of his resentful children, he would likely chastise them for trying to exercise power over their superiors via an inversion of all that Nietzsche thought was noble, good, and superior. His resentful offspring have made a cottage industry of identifying themselves as oppressed for the sake of obtaining socio-economic-political power. But Nietzsche could not honestly deny that they are, in many ways, his spitting image

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1 A Genealogy of Morals, Trans. William A. Hausemann (New York: Macmillan, 1897), 35.

2 ibid., 40.

3 Nietzsche and Postmodern Philosophy (Cambridge: Icon Books, 1999), 34.

4 Twilight of the Idols, Trans. Richard Polt (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1997), 40.

5 “Michel Foucault,” Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Apr. 02, 2003, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/, Accessed June 15, 2020.

6 Foucault: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2.

7 “Why Friedrich Nietzsche Is the Darling of the Far Left and the Far Right,” Tablet Magazine, May 07, 2017, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/nietzsche-left-right, Accessed June 15, 2020.

8 ibid.

9 “Derrida, Politics and Democracy to Come,” in Philosophy Compass 2/6 (2007), 766.

10 ibid. (emphasis added)

11 See Faye, Emmanuel. “Nazi Foundations in Heidegger’s Work,” in South Central Review Volume 23, Number 1 (Spring: 2006), 55-66.

12 This was Nietzsche’s description of himself.

13 As Daniel W. Conway explains in his book Nietzsche and the Political:

Nietzsche is no champion of democracy, but he believes that demotic interests are best served in hierarchical political regimes devoted to the breeding and production of exemplary human beings. All members of a thriving community are, and should be, elevated by the “immoral” exploits of its highest exemplars. While this elevation is least visible (and least appreciated) within the demotic stratum of a hierarchical society, he nevertheless insists, like J.S.Mill, that some attenuated benefits of perfectionism trickle down to everyone.

– Nietzsche & the Political (New York: Routledge, 1997), 36.

The so-called corona virus (CV) pandemic has taken the world by storm.  Like many people, this author had never so much as heard the term “corona virus” until about three or four months ago.  But writing now in early May 2020, it seems as if it’s been with us forever. 

One of the barriers to thinking clearly about the CV pandemic and resulting lock down of the economy was the remarkable speed at which it all occurred.  It seemed that one day all was well, and the next that governors across the country were ordering their citizens to “shelter in place.”  It was almost as if the entire nation were sucker punched at once.  One day we were going about our business, working our jobs as we always had, and the next we were working from home or not working at all.  Who could ever have imagined such a thing as recently as the beginning of this year? 

The official narrative is that the virus is an unexpected event, originating in China.  Despite the Chinese leadership’s heroic efforts to contain it, the virus managed to spread throughout all the world.  Here in the US, Anthony Fauci is officially hailed as a hero and governors who locked down their states are thought to have taken bold action to save the nation from an even higher death count than has been reported.  They are heroes.  And the more severely they locked down their states, the more heroic they are.    

Although the rapidity at which the crisis emerged and my unfamiliarity with pandemics made analysis difficult at first, the whole CV pandemic always seemed more than a bit suspect to me.  And the longer it has gone on and the more information that has come out, the more my original suspicions have been confirmed.  Below are thirteen reason why I doubt CV narrative.

1.      Quarantining the healthy: The foolish and unbiblical policy of quarantining the healthy makes it obvious that our policymakers either do not know what they are talking about or have evil intentions.  The Bible does permit governments to quarantine the sick.  This can be seen in Leviticus chapter 13 where we read about the detailed process the priests used to determine if a man had leprosy.  It was only after the priest had declared him leprous that an individual was put outside the camp.  But there was no provision in the Mosaic law to lock up healthy people in their dwellings to prevent the spread of leprosy.  Israel as a nation was never locked down.  Applying quarantines only to the sick is an extension of the biblical view of criminal justice.  The Bible’s approach to criminal justice is one of crime punishment, not crime prevention.  In the Bible, a man was punished only after going through due process and being found guilty. There was no bureaucracy in place to punish the innocent with onerous regulations aimed at preventing crime.  Quarantining the healthy is a form of punishing the innocent and it needs to stop. 

2.      The remarkable attack on religious liberty:  It was just three weeks ago that Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear threatened Christians who attended Easter services in Kentucky with having their license plates recorded by local officials and put in quarantine (house arrest) for fourteen days.  Never has this author seen such an arrogant and sinful stance by an American governor toward Christians whose only “offense” was to obey the Biblical injunction to gather on the first day of the week to worship.    

3.      Soviet-style censorship of free speech:  In addition to the free exercise of religion, the US Constitution guarantees the right of free speech.  Yet the major social media companies have taken it upon themselves to censor content that contradicts the official narrative.  For example, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki stated in a recent CNN interview that “Anything that goes against WHO recommendations [on the CV] would be a violation of our policy and so remove is another really important part of our policy.” Likewise, Facebook says that in light of WHO’s declaring COVID-19 a global public health emergency, it will be, “taking aggressive steps to stop misinformation and harmful content from spreading.” Some will say that this is not a violation of free speech, since these YouTube and Facebook are private companies.  But the line between social media companies and the government is blurry.  For example, law professor Jonathan Turley wrote a post earlier this year titled “The Death of Free Speech: Zuckerberg Asks Governments For Instructions On ‘What Discourse Should Be Allowed.” The Atlantic published an article by Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods that the Hill described as calling for Chinese style censorship of the internet. 

4.      The destruction of economic liberty:  Government officials in the United States have forced businesses to close and put, so far, about 30 million people out of work.  This is the largest spike in unemployment in the history of our nation.  Yet the people that have been responsible for making and implementing and enforcing these policies have themselves remained conspicuously employed.  Anthony Fauci has not lost his job.  Neither has Deborah Birx or any of the dozens of governors who have locked down their states.  These actions have created extreme economic hardship for a significant part of the population, while those who are the cause of the suffering are insulated from the repercussions of their actions. 

5.      Destruction of personal liberty:  It’s shocking just how much many of the CV pandemic peddlers seem to love totalitarianism.   See, for example, Tucker Carlson’s report on Peter Walker, a former employee of the McKinsey consulting firm in China.  One clip shows Carlson raising concerns about China’s oppression of its citizens and Peter Walker responding by saying, “look at the results.”  Extraordinary.  An American business leader responding to China’s oppression of its own citizens by saying, “look at the results.”  Who would have thought we’d ever hear such a thing? The Atlantic ran a story at the end of March saying “Get Used to It:  This Lockdown Won’t Be the Last,” telling Americans that they have a future of multiple lock downs to look forward to.  All for our own good, of course. 

6.      Money printing by the Federal Reserve:  In response to the economic shut down, the Federal Reserve (the Fed) has engaged in a surge of money printing the likes of which have never been seen before.  According to this chart from the St. Louis Fed, the Fed’s balance sheet has increased by about $2.4 trillion just since February 19.  When we say that the Fed’s balance sheet has increased by $2.4 trillion, this is just a polite way of saying that the Fed has created $2.4 trillion out of nothing in the space of a little over two months.  To put that in perspective, it took the Fed about a century to create $3 trillion dollars.  That they’ve managed to do nearly that in just over two months without anyone saying much about it is remarkable to say the least.  And don’t for a minute thing the Fed’s done.  According to the very mainstream Marketwatch, the Fed could grow its balance sheet to $10 trillion by early 2021.  This unprecedented increase in the supply of money coupled with an unprecedented decrease in economic output will result in more dollars chasing fewer goods, implying unprecedented consumer price inflation.  Put in Biblical terms, this is theft.  And not only theft, but theft on a scale that is hard to comprehend.  Yet we’re told by elite propaganda outlets such as the New York Times that the expanding debt, which is made possible by the Fed’s expanding its balance sheet, is a good thing.   In truth, such policies by the Fed are both sinful and destructive of our nation.  That massive debt expansion and money printing are sold to the American people by their leaders as positively necessary for dealing the CV pandemic is good reason to suspect the entire narrative is bogus.

7.      The strange involvement of Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases with the Wuhan Institute of Virology:  According to the New York Post, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infection Diseases (NIAID) gave $7.4 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab from which the CV supposedly was released.  The New York Post article dated 4/20/2020 goes on to state that the National Institute of Health, which oversees NIAID, just shut off funding to the lab the prior week.  The financial connection between Fauci’s NIAID and the Wuhan lab is, to say the least, interesting.  Perhaps more information is forthcoming on this issue.

8.      Anthony Fauci’s Jesuit connections:  It’s remarkable how often one finds Jesuits, or men trained by the Jesuits, at the center of important events.  Jay Powell, the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, went to law school at Jesuit Georgetown University.  Recently appointed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh attended high school at Georgetown Preparatory School, a Jesuit boys college prep school. As of the summer of 2018, Kavanaugh was a volunteer tutor and served on the board of Washington Jesuit Academy.  This bring us to Dr. Anthony Fauci.  As Berean Beacon reports, Anthony Fauci attended Jesuit schools from Our Lady of Guadalupe Grammar School in Brooklyn all the way up through his undergraduate degree from College of the Holy Cross.  Says Berean Beacon, “Today, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a position he has held since 1984.  This Jesuit trained deep state operative has been intimately involved in public affairs and policy for the past six presidential administrations.  And now the world stands at the precipice of forced vaccination at the hands of a conglomerate of church, state and science so falsely called.”  

9.      Bill Gates: The more one learns about Bill Gates, the more suspect he becomes.  The Microsoft billionaire has inserted himself in the response to the pandemic to a degree that is truly remarkable and, therefore, his actions require scrutiny.  What do we find when we look into Gates?  He’s a vaccine nut.  As a recent article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Children’s Health Defense website tells us, “Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.  This has prompted some people to say that Bill Gates wants to microchip you, which various fact checking websites have had a field day refuting.  But not so fast. As this report from Target Liberty tells us, Bill Gates doesn’t want to microchip you, he just wants to give you a digital tattoo to prove you’ve had all your shots.  Well, that makes me feel so much better! 

10.  Quarantining the Healthy:  The Bible teaches that there is a place for quarantining individuals who have dangerous diseases.  But if you read what the Scriptures say about quarantining, it is all about isolating the sick, not locking down the healthy.  Yet we’re told by all right-thinking people that to be safe, we must lock healthy individuals in their homes.  This inversion of the Biblical principles of quarantining is prima facie evidence that those who are running the response to CV are at best confused in their thinking.  Another possibility is that they are actively malevolent and intend to use the CV pandemic to attack Americans’ civil rights. 

11.  Worldwide, synchronized media hype:  It’s been fascinating to see the worldwide media hype surrounding the CV pandemic.  Commenting on this phenomenon during a recent interview on the Ron Paul Liberty Report, Denis Rancourt made the point that this hype appeared to be “coordinated.”   He went on to say, “I believe that there is a network that does influence the main editors of the main papers in the great number of countries and then that sets the scene so the word is given out when they want something like this [the CV hype] to just flood the mainstream media.”    

12.  Empty hospitals:  We were told that hospitals across the country would be swamped beyond capacity, but that seems not to have been the case.  In fact, far from being at overcapacity, many hospitals are laying off doctors and nurses due to lack of business.  The Washington Post, for example, reported on April 9, 2020 that “Cash-starved hospitals and doctor groups cut staff amid pandemic.”  That certainly isn’t what we were led to believe would be happening.  Military.com reports that a Seattle field hospital set up in that city closed after three days during which it saw not one single patient.  Reuters ran a story on May 1 with the headline “Little-used Navy hospital ship Comfort leaves New York after treating COVID-19 patients.” Of course, pubic officials never will admit that they were wrong. Their strategy will be to say that it was their lock down and enforcement of social distancing that accounted for the much lower than anticipated incidence of COVID-19.  But their attacks on liberty and the destructive spending by Congress and money printing by the Fed, all which evils were necessitated by the lock down, strongly suggest that their approach was not the correct one.  

13.  Suspect attribution of cause of death:  The Guardian ran a story on April 15 with the headline “New York City coronavirus death toll jumps past 10,000 in revised count.”  As it turns out, the NYC added 3,778 people to the death toll who weren’t tested but were presumed to have died of the disease.  That seems more like guesswork than anything else.  Just last week, Project Veritas ran a story saying that funeral directors in NYC were indicating that COVID-19 death statistics were being padded by falsely attributing cause of death the COVID-19.

What shall we make of all this?  It seems to me that there are two main possibilities.  First, our leaders – by leaders I’m referring not only to political leaders but to thought and business leaders as well – are simply confused.  They really do think that cracking down on free speech, locking healthy people in their homes, forcibly closing business, putting tens of millions of people out of work and having the Fed print oceans of bogus money really is the best way to deal with the CV.  Second, they know the whole lock down social distancing thing is absurd and are simply doing this as a way of conditioning people to even more stringent lock downs and social controls in the future, perhaps culminating in some sort of world government dystopian tyranny of the sort one reads about in the book of Revelation. In my opinion, the latter is a more likely scenario than the former.

This is not to say that all politicians, business leaders, journalists and academics who support the lock downs are aware of some great master plan.  But the remarkable amount of worldwide coordination going on suggests that there is some organizing agent behind the scenes.  It is possible that I could be wrong about this.  It is my opinion.  You may have a different view. Perhaps additional study will make things clearer.  But whether the lock downs and attacks on personal liberty and economic freedom just happen to have the appearance of coordination, or whether there is, in fact, a conspiracy to take away our liberties and our property, it is imperative for Christians to stand up and speak out, rebuking from the Word of God those who would encroach on our Constitution and our freedom. 

It may sound strange to some to think that the Bible can be used to fight for freedom.  But in truth, it is the Bible and the Bible alone, the sword of the Spirit as Paul calls it, that is our only sure weapon in in our fight against tyranny.            

“There’s a historic battle going on now across the West, in Europe, America and elsewhere. It is globalism against populism.  And you may loath populism, but I tell you a funny thing, it’s becoming very popular.”

• Nigel Farage

As of January 31, 2020, Great Britain is no longer part of the European Union (EU).  Britain’s success in parting ways with the EU, what is commonly called Brexit, short for British Exit from the EU, is the culmination of nearly 30 years of work by Britons opposed to the Maastricht Treaty, which the was signed by the U.K.’s conservative government in 1992, making Great Britain part of the EU.

In June 2016, a referendum was held asking voters whether they wanted to remain in the EU or leave.  Despite a great deal of opposition from the establishment, the vote went 52% in favor of Brexit, with 48% electing to remain in the EU.

Although interests dedicated to keeping Britain in the EU worked hard to subvert Brexit, the resounding victory of the conservatives under the leadership of Boris Johnson on December 12, 2019, effectively guaranteed the success of Brexit.

In this post, I don’t intend to get into the weeds of the political process that brought about Brexit.  Neither do I intend to write much about the principle figures who supported Brexit or opposed it.  My aim here is to step back and to view Brexit in its larger historical context, that of conflict between the Protestant Westphalian World Order and the New World Order globalism of the Roman Catholic Church-State (RCCS).

Though very little attention has been paid to the religious aspect of Brexit by mainstream journalism, and though it may seem strange to some to speak of any relationship between the 16th century Protestant Reformation and the 21st century Brexit, this author holds that, not only is there a relationship between the Reformation and Brexit, but that the relationship is a close one.  Indeed, it is not an overstatement to put the relationship in these terms:  No Protestant Reformation, no Brexit.  It’s that simple.

Globalism:  Protestants Oppose, Catholics Embrace            

On January 12, 2017, the Washington Post ran an article titled “Catholics like the European Union more than Protestants do. This is why,” in which political scientists Brent Nelsen and James Guth note the split between Protestants and Roman Catholic over the EU and explain the reasons for this phenomenon.

After commenting that there’s a great deal of skepticism about the role of religion in European politics, Brent Nelsen observed,

But in 2001, we started looking at Eurobarometer data, and it’s very clear that Catholics, controlling for all other factors, favor the E.U. more than do Protestants.  These attitudes were forged in the Reformation, with the development of two different approaches to governance in Europe. Catholics see Europe as a single cultural whole that ought to be governed in some coordinated way. Protestants, on the other hand, have seen the nation state as a bulwark against Catholic hegemony, and they have been very reluctant to give it up, even as religion has become less important.

This is an excellent summary of the very distinct views of international relations held by Protestants and Romanists.  Later in the article, Nelsen expands on this idea,

Catholicism has always been a universal religion.  It was the successor to the Roman Empire, and in Catholic theology and ideology, there’s always been an emphasis on the unity of Christendom. Even today, even though the pope doesn’t claim secular authority, there’s still supranational governance within the Roman Catholic Church. So Catholics have always been very comfortable, even if subconsciously, with the notion of supranational governance.

After the Reformation, Protestants, on the other hand, attempted to carve out areas of religious liberty and caught on to the notion of the nation state. They didn’t invent the concept — it was invented by both sides as they came out of the religious wars of the 17th century — but the Protestants saw the nation state as very important for guaranteeing their liberty. For people in the Nordic states and the United Kingdom, the continent was the source of instability and of hegemony, and that’s part of why they developed a strong commitment to the nation and to national sovereignty — this was really the main vehicle for defense against, first, expanding Catholic control in the 16th and 17th centuries, and then, later on, Napoleon and Hitler.

We can summarize Nelsen’s comments thus: The Roman Catholic Church-State, as successor to the Roman Empire, believes in globalism, in empire building and in a top-down structure of world government, whereas Protestants view these ideas as tyrannical and see the nation-state as a bulwark against them and as a guarantor of personal liberty.

What Saith the Scriptures?

So who’s right in this conflict?  Are Romanists calling for world government – it’s remarkable to this author that, despite the many, open, and aggressive calls for world government by popes and other high officials of the Roman Catholic Church-State, so little note is made of Rome’s push for globalism;  this is true both among members of the mainstream media and the independent, alternate media; it’s as if reporters and pundits all have veils over their hearts when writing about Rome – in the right, or are Protestants who view the nation state as a bulwark against tyranny?

Very obviously, the Protestants have it right.  So where are the Scriptural proofs?  While this author does not claim to exhaust in this brief post all the Bible has to say in support of independent nation states and in opposition to globalist tyranny, it is possible to hit the highlights.

Empires are Monuments to Sinful Man’s Pride  

The Tower of Babel is one early example of man’s sinful attempt to build a world empire as a monument to his own pride.  After the flood, the Lord commanded Noah and his sons, much in the same way as he had Adam, to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”  But Noah’s descendants did not obey, preferring instead to stay in one place and to erect a monument to their own pride.  As Genesis 11 recounts, the Lord responded and put an end to their enterprise.  He confused their language and “scattered them [the people] over the face of all the earth.”

In his address on Mars Hill, the Apostle Paul sheds further light on God’s reason for doing what he did to Babel.  According to Paul, confusing their language and scattering them across the face of the earth appears to have been an act of God’s mercy.  Paul explains, “And He has made form one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him” (Acts 17:26-27).

Now “nations” (Greek ethnos) here has a different, though related, meaning to the modern term “nation state.”  Nations, in Paul’s usage, were what we today would call “people groups.”  That is, a nation was a collection of individuals sharing a common ancestry, language and culture.  A nation state, as we use that term today, although not identical to the what Paul meant by “nations”, is a closely related idea.  A nation state, as it’s come to be understood, is the political expression of a particular people group.

To prove this, simply think about the nation states of the modern world.  They have, historically, represented people with a common ancestry, language and culture.  This is not to says that there can be no distinctions among people within a nation state.  But, practically speaking, it appears that there are limits to how much diversity can exist within a nation state before that nation state itself ceases to exist.

If it’s true that God approves of nations in the people groups sense of the term, and it is, it also appears that he likewise approves of the political expression of people groups, what we have come to call the nation state.  This can be seen in the radical reorganization of international relations that occurred in the century following the Protestant Reformation.

The Westphalian World Order  

The Thirty Years’ War and the Treaty of Westphalia that settled it, are among the most important, most positive, and yet among the most forgotten by-products of the Reformation.

So forgotten are the Thirty Year’s War and the Treaty of Westphalia, that probably a large percentage of the American people has never even heard of them, let alone could tell you anything about them.  But if you explain the ideas of the Treaty of Westphalia to them, not only will people generally agree with them, but they likely will say that it’s just common sense.

The Thirty Year’s War took place from 1618-1648 and was a battle between the Catholic and Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire.  Despite the guarantee of religious freedom within the Holy Roman Empire as a result of the Peace of Augsburg, Emperor Ferdinand II attempted to force citizens of the empire to follow Roman Catholic teaching. The Protestants refused to go along, and the long war, the first pan-European war, one that resulted in more than 8 million casualties, followed.  In short, the good guys won, the papal forces were defeated, and the world has never been the same since.

In a nutshell, the Westphalian World Order is the principle of Mind Your Own Business (MYOB) applied to individual countries.  It may surprise many people, but MYOB is a Christian principle.  For example, in 2 Thessalonians, Paul writes, “For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies.  Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread” (2 Thes. 11-12).

Just as there are people who sinfully want to mind everyone else’s business, so too are there national leaders that sinfully want to mind everyone else’s business.  Such was the case of Rome in the pre-Reformation period.  During the Thirty Years’ War, Rome and her proxies were fighting to continue their long-held traditions of murder, theft and extortion, but received, as it were, a mortal wound from the Protestants.

But Rome, though substantially weakened, never gave up her globalist ambitions.  Today, Rome is an institution recovering from that mortal wound.

The European Union as the Fourth Reich

Students of the Second World War are doubtless familiar with the term The Third Reich (German, Die Dritte Reich), which is what the Nazis called Germany under Hitler’s regime.  The German word “Reich” can be translated as “empire, kingdom, or realm.”

Now calling Nazi Germany the Third Reich implies that there was a First and Second Reich.  So what were these?  In his book Mystery, Babylon The Great I.A.

Sadler identified the Holy Roman Empire as the First Reich (111) and the unified Germany from 1870 – 1918 as the Second Reich (214-216).  The Third Reich was, of course, Nazi Germany which lasted from 1933-1945.

Sadler draws a number of parallels between the Hitler’s Third Reich and the EU, which he calls the Fourth Reich.  To wit,

• The EU’s attempt to create “a collectivist European State, with a single economy and currency are remarkably similar to the Nazi plan in 1942 of a united Europe under the control of Germany,

• The fall of communism in eastern Europe brought about a unified Germany and the eastward expansion of the EU and NATO. A unified Germany has become the dominant force in central Europe, “revealing a disturbing parallel with the growth of the Third Reich” (264).

• Czechoslovakia was split in two with the Czech Republic becoming aligned closely with Germany, mirroring Germany’s occupation of the Sudetenland in 1938,

• “Austria then joined the European Union mirroring the Anschluss with Germany in 1938” (264).

Sadler concludes, “Today, through the Maastricht Treaty, national independence has been virtually abolished in favour of a European superstate, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Hitler’s Third Reich.”-

Reichs Under the Control of Rome

Though separated by time – the Holy Roman Empire got its start in the 9th century under Charlemagne – the four Reichs have this in common, they were/are all collectivist empires heavily influenced, indeed one could argue, under the control of, the Roman Catholic Church-State.

• The Holy Roman Emperor was crowned by the pope.

• Sadler notes that during the years of the Second Reich, “the Vatican progressively aligned itself with Germany, ensuring the balance of policies shifted away from those of Protestant Prussia towards that of a pro-Romanist German Empire, which forged an alliance with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria-Hungary had long been a bastion of the Jesuits and the Church of Rome in Central and Eastern Europe” (214).

• The Third Reich famously signed a concordat with Rome. For details, see Hitler’s Pope, The Secret History of Pius XII by Robert Cornwell.

• The Fourth Reich, the EU, has been widely supported by the Roman Catholic Church-State. Indeed, the EU got its start with the Treaty of Rome in 1957, and the popes of Rome have consistently supported the EU.

Many have argued, and this author is in agreement with them, that the EU, properly understood is really the reincarnation of the Holy Roman Empire.  As Sadler notes, the full name of the First Reich was “Sacrum Romanum Imperium Nationis Germanicae”, The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (111).  Although there were many non-German nations that were part of the Holy Roman Empire, the core of the Empire’s economic and political power was Germany, and the Emperor was crowned by the pope.

[caption id="attachment_5345" align="alignnone" width="718"] Pope Francis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel shake hands on the occasion of their private audience, at the Vatican, Saturday, June 17, 2017. (L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP)[/caption]

In like fashion, the core of the EU’s economic and political power is Germany, and the current Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, though nominally Lutheran, is a close ally of the Holy See.

Brexit in Context, A Protestant Victory

With all this history in mind, Brexit can be seen in a new light.  In the opinion of this author, one could argue that Brexit really ought to be seen as the culmination of a sort of second Thirty Years’ War.  Worth noting, is that it took nearly the same amount of time for Nigel Farage and others to bring about Brexit – 27 years – as it did for the Allies to defeat the Catholic forces of the Holy Roman Empire.

In support of this, the idea that Brexit can be seen as a sort of second Thirty Years’ War, let us return to the Washington Post article referenced above.   In response to the question, “Did religion play a part in the Brexit vote?” author James Guth responded,

Yes. If you look at the 2014 European Parliamentary Election Study, in the run-up to the Brexit vote, it’s clear that in the United Kingdom, Catholics were supportive of the E.U., as were minority religions — Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists — whereas Evangelical Protestants were the most critical of the E.U. And a lot of the surveys that were done just before and after the Brexit vote, even though they weren’t very good at identifying different religious groups, found pretty consistently that the more Protestant you were, the more critical you were of the E.U. That may have made the difference: If those Protestants had voted the way the average citizen of the United Kingdom had, Brexit wouldn’t have passed (emphasis added).

When asked, “Is Catholic support for the E.U. a result of explicit church guidance? Or is it simply an implicit cultural value?” James Guth had this very interesting response,

It’s both. The Catholic Church has explicitly supported European integration since World War II. Every pope since the end of World War II has been very supportive of the E.U. In 2014, Pope Francis gave a talk at the European Parliament about the need for the E.U. to rediscover its vision. Catholics are getting cues from the top, even if they’re subtle ones.

It’s the same story with Protestants. In the United Kingdom, you have Evangelical pastors who, on the Sunday before the Brexit referendum, were talking about how leaving the E.U. was the better Christian choice. I was at a conference in Oxford a couple of years ago, and on Sunday, I attended an Evangelical Anglican congregation. The greeter who met us at the door asked me what I was there for, and I explained that I was giving a paper on religion and European identity. He said, “Well, I think you’ve come to the wrong place. We don’t have any Europeans in this congregation.” People are getting cues like this all the time, from the clergy, from others in the congregation. It’s a pervasive cultural force, even if it’s becoming weaker (emphasis added).

Given the history of Roman Catholic attempts to reestablish its hegemony in Europe through support of the EU, and beyond through various globalist initiatives, the Brexiteers successful campaign to pull Britain out of the EU must be seen as a resounding win, not only for Great Britain, but also for all men everywhere who oppose tyranny and love liberty.

Closing Thoughts

“The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors,’” said Jesus to his disciples, who were disputing among themselves about who was the greatest.  Jesus reminded his disciples that it was the unbelieving pagan rulers who oppressed the people while seeking the praise of men.  Jesus went on to tell them, “But not so among you,” and continued by teaching them the principle of servant-leadership.  It is from this that we get the Christian idea of government as servant.

The application of Christ’s words to our present topic is easy to see.  The secular rulers and popes of our day act with the same high-handed disregard for personal liberty as the ancient emperors and rulers Jesus used in his example.  They pretend to be for the people, but their policies are actually destructive of the best interests of the very people they claim to represent.  Nevertheless, they wish to be seen as benefactors and love to be lauded as such.  This haughty spirit can be seen in the popes of Rome by their support for the EU and in the bureaucratic minions who carry out the EU’s marching orders.

In the opinion of this author, the original vote for Brexit in 2016, the election of Donald Trump that same year, the resounding victory of the Tories and Boris Johnson in 2019, and now the successful completion of Brexit should be seen as God’s grace to the people of Great Britain and the United States.  This is not to suggest that everything about Brexit, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump is perfect and above reproach.

But warts and all, what the people of the Great Britain and the United States actually received, is so far superior compared to what they might have received, and perhaps even deserved to receive, that this author cannot help but see God’s gracious and providential hand at work.

In America, we dodged a real bullet in 2016, coming close to electing globalist Hillary Clinton.  Had she become president, she and her globalist advisors would have quickly gone about the business of importing millions more welfare migrants and creating a permanent socialist, Democratic electoral majority.  It would have been the end of America as we know it.

Had the Brexit vote gone the other way in 2016, had the Labour Party and Jerremy Corbyn carried the election in December 2019, Britain likewise would have been in a very different, and much worse, position.

This author tends to be rather pessimistic by nature, always waiting around for the next disaster.  One could even argue that’s justified given the rapid downgrade in society so evident all around.

But all the bad news should not blind Christians to God’s grace, in their own lives and in broader society.  God is still very much in charge, and always has been.  There is not one thing in all of history that takes place but that he has brought it about both for his own glory and for the good of his own people, who were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.

The bottom line is this, Antichrist took a good beating from Brexit, and in that Christians can rejoice.

Let us take encouragement from this win, trusting in God to grant us wisdom and strength day by day.