24 February 2003 ©Homer Kizer
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Commentary — From the Margins
Marxism vs. Prophecy
How was it that Noah could, for more than a century, build an oceanliner in his backyard and his neighbors remain unaware of Elohim's intention to drown humanity? The question can be dismissed by asserting that the Flood narrative is fiction, an allegory to match the equally allegorical fire that will again destroy the face of the earth. Or the question can be trivialized by asserting that the Flood was a localized phenomenon, a local legend exploited by early moralists to impose order over superstitious herdsmen and farmers. Or the question answered by saying that of course Noah's neighbors knew what he was doing, but that they didn't believe that Noah spoke for God, that they believed God was love and wouldn't destroy innocent life.
Jesus says that immediately prior to His return, cultural conditions will be as they were in the time of Noah. The implication is that the prophesied, endtime Tribulation will take humanity by surprise. But that seems hardly possible when a large segment of Christianity believes that we are presently living in the time of the end, that the Rapture could occur anytime, that Christ could return at any moment. And therein exists how this segment of Christianity can be taken by surprise: if the Tribulation precedes any rapture of saints, those who look for saints to escape divine catastrophes by being taken to heaven before these catastrophes occur will, indeed, be as surprised by fulfilled endtime prophecies as Noah's neighbors were when it began raining.
But the mass of humanity is not Evangelical Christian, is not Christian at all, and even in the United States, doesn't believe that the God of ancient Israel will directly intervene in the affairs of men. This God has delayed coming far longer than my grandfather did when I was sent out to the barn to await a promised spanking—my grandfather waited long enough that my cousin and I were having a wonderful time chasing chickens before he showed up with a yardstick, made of a good grade of beech. This God's promised return has been delayed so long that theoretical Marxists will be able to explain every event leading up to Armageddon.
We see this today: France's opposition to the United States militarily engaging Iraq can be explained by economic causes. Iraq supplies France with significant quantities of oil, and Iraq owes France debt that will be uncollectable under a democratic regime. It is not in French interests to have Saddam toppled. Nor is it in French interests to have the United Nations made impotent; France will never again acquire veto power over the actions of the United States, Russia, and China. Plus, there might well be French fingerprints on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. So for very explainable reasons, France resists the implementation of an American hegemony in the Middle East.
What we don't see is that France and Russia are the leading spokes-nations for spiritual powers [sars] behind the existing world order, that presently a turf war rages in the spiritual realm governed by the Elohim [Theon and Theos], that the spiritual king of Greece will utterly trample the spiritual sars of Persia, and by extension, Babylon. The spiritual king of Greece has a great single horn, which is his firstborn son, that will fly out of the West, carrying away all opposition just as Alexander the Great did.
Humanity refuses to perceive itself as a manipulated species: we are the masters of our destinies, or so we want to believe. The idea that we don't determine our collective fate is intellectually repugnant and philosophically alien; yet the underlying construction of Christianity is that "God" governs the affair of men. The story of Nebuchadnezzar living as a beast concludes with the restored king acknowledging that the Most High God can give the kingdom of men to whomever He will—and His will has been made known in the prophecies and visions recorded by Daniel.
Theoretical Marxism solves two problems associated with prophecy. It eliminates the need to believe in a God that rules over humanity, and it excludes many of the prophetic readings of wouldbe experts and biblical watchmen. There will not be yet another revival of the Holy Roman Empire under the EEC/EU banner, with Germany as the dominant power. Won't happen. Rome is nowhere mentioned in prophecy, let alone in endtime prophecies, which were sealed and secret until that generic period identified as the time of the end, the period beginning approximately a year ago. A future pope will not be the man of perdition: that prophesied man of perdition must theologically hold the error of Bishop Arius. And Christ does not return when armies surrounding Jerusalem are destroyed—the one who will then claim to be Christ and who will require everyone to receive a tattoo of the Cross will be the true antiChrist.
Marxism, like evolution, offers humanity a reasonable explanation for what God does and has done without acknowledging the existence of a spiritual, or supernatural realm. Natural forces, economic or biological, determine the course of humanity, thereby indirectly deifying "nature." And like evolution, Marxism makes more sense from a distance than it does when examined closely. It answers questions of a general nature better than it does questions that are specific, such as why would two oil men like President Bush and Vice-President Cheney implement an action that will exert downward pressure on oil prices when they know that oil is not a finite resource, but renewable at a yet undetermined rate? Why would these two oil men not allow oil prices to climb above $40 a barrel, thereby making extraction from oil shale practical, or production from vegetative sources practical, or production from fields like Alaska's Cook Inlet that has a high water content practical. When I lived on the Kenai Peninsula, drillers told me that the oil-bearing strata under the Inlet was 1,500 feet thick as opposed to the 55 feet thick strata under Saudi Arabia, but that the Cook Inlet strata was fractured shale which had allowed water to seep into the deposit, making drying the oil too expensive under our "old oil" pricing structure. Two oil-men, such as Bush and Cheney, know that we don't need oil from Iraq.
Although Iraqi oil will indirectly benefit this nation by artificially depressing the price per barrel, that indirect benefit will come back to bite us unless existing fields refill at a rate faster than reason suggests, which might be the case since I am not privy to the same technological information that Bush and Cheney have. So the existence of Iraqi oil provides the economic justification for excluding fulfilled prophecy as the reason we will bring democracy to the citizens of that nation while, at the same time, overturning an existing world order. Yes, we will be successful regardless of when we engage Saddam. We will be successful beyond even our expectations. For a short while, democracy and political correctness will sweep through the region. But just as French peasants were not ready for democracy in 1789, or Russian peasants weren't in 1917, or German workers weren't in 1918, Islamic fundamentalists are not ready for democracy. In the historic succession of Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler, a four-headed king of the South will emerge following the breaking of that first horn of the spiritual king of Greece. This king of the South will hold the theological error that Jesus was a created being, not God [Theos]. This king of the South will head a ten-nation coalition, of which there are five strong and five weak nations, and he will leave a third of humanity dead.
When the first horn of the spiritual king of Greece is broken, a second ten-nation coalition will oppose the king of the South. The Marxist will be able to explain how this first horn was broken—the "why" is that there will again be a Passover like the one when Moses lead ancient Israel out of Egypt. Two men, like Moses and Aaron, will lead spiritual Israel (i.e., greater Christianity) out from bondage to sin, which is lawlessness. The Old Testament moralism of 18th & 19th Century Christianity will return with a vengeance. Actually, the morality of 1st-Century Christianity will return. A third of all Christians will again be spiritual Judeans, not spiritual Gentiles. And this is at a time when more than half of the world's population will self-identify itself as Christian.
Half way through seven years of Tribulation, two ten-nation coalitions will fight for control of Jerusalem. When that happens, the Marxists will explain about food shortages, about food being leveraged to produce spiritual disciples for denominations that hold the error of Bishop Arius, about how the meteor strike has disrupted European economies, about how only the United States and Russia had the land mass necessary to absorb the use of weapons of mass destruction. And they will neither expect the arrival of Satan as the antiChrist, nor the return of the Messiah forty-two months later. I suspect it is my job to read prophecy for them, so that they can fit their explanations into a prophesied framework, given, then sealed until the time of the end.
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