If you look at how the Bible says the world ends, one of the key components is a one-world government that’s run by a very charismatic and charming fellow that ends up running an authoritarian regime.
While I believe this prophecy is inevitable, it’s impossible to know a lot of the things that will happen between now and then. Just by looking around at how our country’s going, it seems like people are all too eager to grant more power to the state at the expense of individual freedom, which only makes it easier to be subsumed into a one-world government later.
Ever notice that undefended viewpoints tend to be ignored? If Christians don’t speak up about their beliefs, those beliefs will more quickly be overrun by some kind of legislation, executive order, or social branding. In many cases they’re already on their way. It’s not the job of thought leaders, pastors, missionaries, or some kind of religious professional…it’s yours. You should spend time with people that are not believers. (How else will you influence the world for Christ?) You may be the only Christian in your social circles. If that’s true, you may be the only live link to Jesus those people ever see.
I once heard someone discussing an unrelated topic. Whatever she was discussing wasn’t a mainstream viewpoint, but she wanted to get the perspective out in the public sphere. She said she wanted to talk about it because “talking about it normalizes it.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put that way before, but it makes a lot of sense. So then, in all the commentary and opinion that passes for news today, you probably don’t hear a whole lot that agrees with your worldview. The focus should primarily be Christian, but there are a few others thrown in. Maybe it’s up to you to talk about, and thus “normalize” your viewpoint. Here are a few examples:
- “I am a Christian and I try to model my life off Christ’s teachings in the Bible. That is my choice, and it is a right guaranteed to me as an American in the United States Constitution.”
- “People can identify with whatever gender they wish and pretend their chromosome combination doesn’t affect biological reality, but they can’t force me to play along with it. My right to freedom of religion (which includes embracing truth over lies), guaranteed in the Bill of Rights in America, trumps their desire to strong-arm others into seeing the world as they do.”
- “Schools should ensure their students get really good at reading, writing, and arithmetic before they look to broaden their scope into other areas.”
- “If you look closely at them, ‘Greenism,’ ‘Wokeism,’ and ‘Stateism’ are all structured in a remarkably similar fashion to the way religions are. They should be subject to the rules of separation of church and state as much as any other religion is.”
- “Science and Christianity complement one another. There are many areas of science to explore, but if you consider the system of bytes of data (which relies on ones and zeros to denote characters), it’s tough to imagine a system like that just evolving itself into existence. It had to be designed. How much more unlikely, then, would it be for DNA to arise spontaneously? Consider the complexity of DNA, the fact that it reads four characters instead of two, how every three base pairs specifies which one of 20 amino acids to link to the last one, and that these chains of amino acids can link together to form proteins that serve different functions in life. There are actually people who believe this system, more complex than, say, 90% of our most complex technology, started from nothing (even before bacteria came along), but they refuse to even entertain the notion that maybe, just maybe, someone actually designed the system.
- This is the most important one on the list. “It’s easy to divide people. What do you say we take a look at who’s trying to unite them? Christ came for the criminals, the law-abiders, the young and the old, uneducated and scholars, men, women, people that looked like Him, people that came from far-off lands, the rich, and the poor. We therefore cannot be selective about with whom we share the Gospel.”
If you’re a Christ-follower, the world is going to align itself against the way you think. That doesn’t mean you need to roll over and get steamrolled. Standing your ground in the face of opposition may be exactly what causes an unbelieving onlooker to reconsider their position. If this is an idea you find difficult to agree with, you’re making it that much easier for opposing viewpoints to engineer the terms of your suppression. Don’t be afraid to push back.
Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. –Eph 6:13