February 15, 2003 ©Homer Kizer
Printable File
Commentary — From the Margins
A Response to "Coming Ashore"
In Time's February 17, 2003, issue, Charles Krauthammer writes, in his Viewpoint piece "Coming Ashore," that the war with Iraq isn't just to disarm Saddam, but to reform a whole part of the world. Indeed, it is, for this war signals the replacement of one world order with a short-lived another, one that will be broken while it is still ascending in power just as Alexander the Great's reign ended when he had no more enemies to conquer.
Biblical prophecy has been the nearly exclusive domain of Evangelical Christianity, the theology of President Bush, who can see in text (Rev 9:15) that at some specific hour, four angels presently bound at the river Euphrates will be loosed to kill a third of humanity. As the President of this nation and as a born-again Believer with the available authority to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in and around the river Euphrates, he is without choice: he must do what he can to remove WMDs from this region and to eliminate the possibility of their return. To do anything less is irresponsible to both the citizens of this country and to the third of humanity whose death is prophesied, for prophecy can be abolished.
Theoretical Marxists find an economic cause for every societal action (they do not have to look far for one in our squabble with Saddam), but our coming ashore is prophesied in the visions of Daniel—if not our coming ashore, then the intervention of a lone superpower coming out of the west. The meaning traditionally assigned by Evangelical scholars to Daniel's Greek he-goat that tramples the Medo-Persian ram has the prophecy being fulfilled by Alexander, but the vision is for the time of the end; it was sealed and secret and not understandable by anyone until that generic period. So all traditional understandings need scrapped, as the intervention taken to eliminate WMDs from the region will bring about the prophesied destruction, making the President's actions those of a Cassandra.
The Athenian values of democracy and political correctness are those of the spiritual king of Greece, which explains why France, Germany, and Russia will only, after the fact, support the toppling of the present world order. Two topplings will occur, one physical or secular, the other spiritual. The secular toppling can be easily predicted. Oil, oil production and oil reserves are its catalysts—but as oil men, the President and Vice-President know that oil is not a finite natural resource, but is renewable at a not yet determined rate. So oil is only the toppling's lubricant. The issue is truly the installation of democratic reform instituted worldwide in an attempt to bring peace and prosperity to human society, thereby demonstrating that there is at least one social construct which will deliver all that it promises.
France, Germany, and Russia's objection to the US’s coming ashore is not visibly predictable, and pertains to them being the spiritual spokes-nations for the Roman and Orthodox churches (which also explains why Greece is not with the U.S.). As the spiritual king of Greece tramples the Medo-Persia sars, he also tramples Trinitarian Christianity, setting it up to be replaced by the theological successors of the Vandals; i.e., Christians who hold the belief of Bishop Arius concerning the nature of Jesus prior to His human birth.
Western cultures pride themselves on being the masters of their destinies. We philosophically reject the concept that we are pawns of spiritual powers in an unenterable dimension, yet that is the undeniable claim of Christianity: God governs the affairs of men. Yes, this is true. We have individual freewill, but we are collectively lab mice confined to a round cage. God has given prophecies, has sealed them, and has now unsealed them to establish His credibility with humanity. And what He has unsealed reveals that the single superpower flying out of the West will be suddenly broken. Four lesser powers emerge from the breaking of this single horn. These four consolidate into two ten-nation coalitions, both theologically holding the position that Christ was a created being prior to His human birth. One of these coalitions will be controlled by the spiritual king of the South, and will be Islamic, holding the position that Jesus was merely a prophet of Allah. The other controlled by the spiritual king of the North, will be headed by Russia and might well include a substantially weakened United States. Neither coalition emerges, though, until after the existing world order has been successfully toppled by a single nation or national coalition flying low out of the west.
The biblical watchmen who would have us fretting about the forthcoming war with Iraq lack spiritual discernment, evident by their continued antiRome bias. They will still be looking for a united Europe to emerge as the world's premier superpower when ecological and military catastrophes make all life in Europe tenuous. There will, indeed, be another world war, one in which a third of humanity perishes. President Bush's good intentions will only set the stage for the rearrangement of the world order necessary for food, not oil, to be the leveraged commodity, thereby shifting the primary battlefields away from the Middle East.
Yes, world war will be coming ashore to a field near you. Food will be the weapon that topples Trinitarian Christianity as God softens psyches prior to the liberation of humanity from spiritual bondage to lawlessness. Liberation always seems to involve coming ashore.
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