I have to admit it - since I got an audio book for a long drive from the Endtime series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, I have pressed ahead with the written versions of the 5 book saga. They are in the Sci Fi section of the library, which is strangely appropriate, even though the books themselves are based on John's Book of Revelations from the New Testament. It is a fast-passed action thriller about the anti-Christ and the end of the world, and those who work under God's aegis to fulfill his will. I said "I have to admit it" because it is more pulp than anything else - in other words, fun, but mostly fluff. It also has a fair amount of fundamentalist Christian religion in it, which might offend some. I am not fundamentalist, but I do enjoy having God play a direct and unquivacable role in human history, simply because I believe "I Am Who Am" does - although, to my mind, in more subtle form. But all that is not what concerns me here.
Rather, I was surprised to see that the books, written primarily in the "90's, focus politically on the effort towards One World unification, which is the goal of the deceiving, all-too-human Anti-Christ. He works under the guise of ecumenical humanism, bringing all to one religion, one government, one currency, one world-wide culture for the good of all humankind. Of course, being the Anti-Christ, the ultimate agenda is the enslavment of humankind, and its total reliance on a secular one-world state in which there is only one truth, as spouted by the Anti-Christ. In other words, the freedom from particular religions and want and war is to lead to the worst totalitarian nightmare ever. I was surprised because I had not known that this - the (evil) move towards a single state - was a belief of the Christian fundamentalists. I was also surprised because this is also the belief of many intellectual neo-Marxists, who most certainly are not in the fundamentalist camp.
Of the latter, I became very familiar with them in grad school in the early '80's, with such names as Foucault and Lacan giving evidence of a subversive move towards the same ends as the fictional (in the series) Anti-Christ. For the neo-Marxist, or post-structuralists (more descriptive of some, although I won't get into it), it is not a move of any one person or country. Rather, it is the will towards power that is inherently built into the minds of those in hierarchical systems, whether they know it or not. It is a part of their - of our - structure of thought. Whatever twists and turns history at large might make, it always is redirected towards this one-world schemata, using whatever invention or disaster or dislocation to move closer to this goal. The modern form of this thought, say the intellectuals, began in industrial Europe, and has spread, with outright or unconscious design, through the entire world. For those of the Marxist bent, capitalism is the driving force, the "anti-Christ" of this movement, to be dashed upon the rocks of history by one-world communism. For all the rest, including the fundamentalists, communism is the, or one of the possible, "Anti-Christs."
Oddly, it can be said that the fundamentalist, the communist, and the purely structuralist approaches all stem from the Bible. Rather than our structure being geared solely for power, it is instead geared for an appocalyptic ending of a quasi-world government, with a new and better world to come after. The secularists cleary took this idea of a will to power, and a final utopia (whether they know it or not) from the Jews and Christians. Who or what is the Anti-Christ is the one great thing in contention. For the fundamentalists, it is both the Western humanist atheistic governments and the harder -core communist dictatorships. For the secularists, it is capitalism or, for some, religious fundamentalists. In the Reagan era, those were Christian fundamentalists. Now, it might include all with a strong religious bent.
What is interesting is that this "will to power" is also at the root of Man's fall from Eden. For the Christian (as well as other religious), this disobedient human will must be placed under the will of God. It is much the same for the communist: the will of the individual must be placed under the will of the collective. It is clear from this where the Marxists (who are modern, scientific communists) got the idea of their utopia from. However, the religious believe that Man's will will always fail, as a collective or not, and that only God's will can bring us back to Eden. Marxists belive God is a myth invented to subdue the masses, and that Man's evil is due to the violence of hierarchical (and especially capitalistic) societies, which will disappear once the evils are taken away.
Phew. I personally favor the religious perspective, but one thing is clear: beneath our modern will to power or whatever we want to call it, is the will towards the Apocalypse. Call the Bible divine, or only ancient myth, but it seems to have captured the modern mentality from thousands of years ago, so much so that it serves as the template even for those who despise it. Here, then, is the power of myth, telling truth in ways that might take centuries to discover. But of the God of Man, or of Man as God, we still must someday discover which is the truth, and it may take an Anti-Christ figure in our midst to do so. FK
Rather, I was surprised to see that the books, written primarily in the "90's, focus politically on the effort towards One World unification, which is the goal of the deceiving, all-too-human Anti-Christ. He works under the guise of ecumenical humanism, bringing all to one religion, one government, one currency, one world-wide culture for the good of all humankind. Of course, being the Anti-Christ, the ultimate agenda is the enslavment of humankind, and its total reliance on a secular one-world state in which there is only one truth, as spouted by the Anti-Christ. In other words, the freedom from particular religions and want and war is to lead to the worst totalitarian nightmare ever. I was surprised because I had not known that this - the (evil) move towards a single state - was a belief of the Christian fundamentalists. I was also surprised because this is also the belief of many intellectual neo-Marxists, who most certainly are not in the fundamentalist camp.
Of the latter, I became very familiar with them in grad school in the early '80's, with such names as Foucault and Lacan giving evidence of a subversive move towards the same ends as the fictional (in the series) Anti-Christ. For the neo-Marxist, or post-structuralists (more descriptive of some, although I won't get into it), it is not a move of any one person or country. Rather, it is the will towards power that is inherently built into the minds of those in hierarchical systems, whether they know it or not. It is a part of their - of our - structure of thought. Whatever twists and turns history at large might make, it always is redirected towards this one-world schemata, using whatever invention or disaster or dislocation to move closer to this goal. The modern form of this thought, say the intellectuals, began in industrial Europe, and has spread, with outright or unconscious design, through the entire world. For those of the Marxist bent, capitalism is the driving force, the "anti-Christ" of this movement, to be dashed upon the rocks of history by one-world communism. For all the rest, including the fundamentalists, communism is the, or one of the possible, "Anti-Christs."
Oddly, it can be said that the fundamentalist, the communist, and the purely structuralist approaches all stem from the Bible. Rather than our structure being geared solely for power, it is instead geared for an appocalyptic ending of a quasi-world government, with a new and better world to come after. The secularists cleary took this idea of a will to power, and a final utopia (whether they know it or not) from the Jews and Christians. Who or what is the Anti-Christ is the one great thing in contention. For the fundamentalists, it is both the Western humanist atheistic governments and the harder -core communist dictatorships. For the secularists, it is capitalism or, for some, religious fundamentalists. In the Reagan era, those were Christian fundamentalists. Now, it might include all with a strong religious bent.
What is interesting is that this "will to power" is also at the root of Man's fall from Eden. For the Christian (as well as other religious), this disobedient human will must be placed under the will of God. It is much the same for the communist: the will of the individual must be placed under the will of the collective. It is clear from this where the Marxists (who are modern, scientific communists) got the idea of their utopia from. However, the religious believe that Man's will will always fail, as a collective or not, and that only God's will can bring us back to Eden. Marxists belive God is a myth invented to subdue the masses, and that Man's evil is due to the violence of hierarchical (and especially capitalistic) societies, which will disappear once the evils are taken away.
Phew. I personally favor the religious perspective, but one thing is clear: beneath our modern will to power or whatever we want to call it, is the will towards the Apocalypse. Call the Bible divine, or only ancient myth, but it seems to have captured the modern mentality from thousands of years ago, so much so that it serves as the template even for those who despise it. Here, then, is the power of myth, telling truth in ways that might take centuries to discover. But of the God of Man, or of Man as God, we still must someday discover which is the truth, and it may take an Anti-Christ figure in our midst to do so. FK
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