Are We Under the Rule of Antichrist?

Are we under the rule of Anti-Christ? A number of European writers, secular writers, are arguing that we are. According to them, as Western culture has spiraled down into materialism and the pursuit of pleasure we have left ourselves open to the reign of Satan. Satan presents disorder as order and truth as lies. (I am reminded that in John 8 Jesus said Satan was the father of lies.) Modern men are doing the exact thing Isaiah warned about 2700 years ago: “Woe to those who call evil good
    and good evil,
who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
    and sweet for bitter!

The modern beat poet Allen Ginsburg compared contemporary American society with the pagan god, Moloch, who demanded human sacrifice from his worshipers. 

One common theme in all these writers is that the world is not under our control and is generally out of control. They speak of modern technology having a mind and purpose of its own, not that of the people who created it. A Google engineer was recently fired for arguing that computers can develop the ability to think and feel and have self-awareness. The fabulously rich titans of Tech don’t like the idea of something possessing more power than they do themselves. They don’t realize it’s too late. There are already powers that lie beyond their reach. They just can’t make themselves admit it.

Something outside ourselves is ruling our world and that something they have decided to call the AntiChrist.

The British writer, Paul Kingsnorth has said: The West was once Christendom. But Christendom died. If you live in the West now, you are living among its ruins.

Augusto del Noce is a recent European philosopher: In his book, The Crisis of Modernity he augues that it is not what our contemporary elite are saying that’s the problem;  it is what they are not saying: He says, “what is excluded is the ‘supernatural’, religious transcendence …

There is no ultimate truth. There is no higher story to guide mankind. All ultimate meaning we create for ourselves.”

What modern men want is the death of history. We are no longer rooted in our Christian past. We have to find a new rootedness.

What modern men want is the death of God.

What modern man want is the death of the sacred.

Western elites have replaced God with human visions of utopia. And these visions have produced the greatest nightmares in the history of civilization. Mass murder on an industrial scale.

Christ and His teachings have been supplanted and what has replaced them? Antichrist. 

As followers of Jesus Christ how do we respond to all this:

1.    The Bible speaks of Satan’s power; Eph. 6:12: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against ^(S)the rulers, against the authorities, against ^(T)the cosmic powers over ^(U)this present darkness, against ^(V)the spiritual forces of evil ^(W)in the heavenly places.” Satan’s power is not a recent development; you may recall he wielded influence in the Garden of Eden at the beginning of time. Whether or not the Antichrist of the Bible has arrived we do not know. The word antichrist is only used four times in the Bible, all by the Apostle John. He says the antichrists—yes, he says there is more than one—have one chief characteristic. They deny who Jesus Christ is. There are lots of candidates for antichrist in our world today.

2.    These authors understate the ongoing power of Christ in our culture: I have written an entire book about the influence of Christ on the modern man and that influence is enormous. And I have several videos on the same topic which I will link below. Western culture is the result of a binding of people together with a particular religious story. The greatest of the cultural historians, Christopher Dawson, observed: “There has never been any unitary organisation of Western culture apart from that of the Christian Church….” That is still true. Christianity is the most powerful voice in the West and there do not seem to be any candidates to take its place.

3.    Jesus Christ is still on the throne. Some Christian churches have abandoned the purpose God created them for and capitulated to the secular gods, but most have not. Millions of local congregations around the world still represent the Kingdom of God and His rule over all. Just this week I met a middle aged woman who recently experienced a radical conversion to faith in Christ. That happens millions and millions of times every year. 

4.    The people of God still wield the dominant influence in the modern world. I have been reading recently of the re-Christianization of Europe. By whom? By immigrants from former European colonies.  What is the most religious city in England? London. Why? Tens of thousands of Africans have invaded with a vibrant Christian faith. If we are so weak why are the Western elite so afraid of us?

We are no more controlled today by antichrist than we have ever been. There has always been spiritual warfare and always will be; that is until Christ Himself returns and sweeps away all the little antichrists who pretend to have spiritual power.

Thank you for listening. May our God bless you this day in a mighty way.

More Resources: Paul Kingsnorth in Unherd, summarizes several arguments that in modern western culture we are ruled by Satan himself: https://unherd.com/?p=432032?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=a5ff977696&mc_eid=5b400e1632

Google engineer fired for claiming a robot/computer had “sentient” qualities: https://adage.com/article/digital-marketing-ad-tech-news/google-suspends-blake-lemoine-who-claimed-ai-bot-had-become-sentient/2420056

Atheists for Jesus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX5Mi-pVgGY&list=PLkHlTST983SoyO674yIugUXV1lLjm-oeM&index=3