“My Church Will Be Victorious” – Part 1. Rebelion and the Tree of Babylon

Introduction

On many levels, America is a divided country. The two sides of the divide seem to be unwilling to compromise on their beliefs. People are even talking about another civil war in America. That is crazy. These certainly are interesting, historic, and strange times. Change is in the air, and some are calling for radical change, now.

While I see all of this unfolding before my eyes, the issue for me is not political – it is spiritual. I believe there is a spiritual war, a type of WW 3, ongoing in the heavenly and kingdom realms. What we are seeing around us in the earthly realm is a manifestation of that heavenly war. This war is being fought over power to control the heart and soul of America and to destroy God’s creation – the Church in America and those who follow Jesus Christ. In my previous 2 posts I examined the consequences of the war in the earthly realm and the spirit of witchcraft that fuels the war. The next two posts ask the questions: How is this war going to affect the Church? And how can the Church join forces with God’s angel armies to participate in His victory?

But first a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the dangers facing America today: 

“There is always this fallacious belief: “It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.” Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth”.

Early on the morning of October 29, 2020 I was in prayer asking the Lord, “Jesus, what is happening in America? Where will this all end up?” Instead of answering that question God said this – “My church will be victorious”, impIying that we are in a war, because victory is about winning a war. I believe God loves America, but Jesus did not die for America; He died for the Kingdom of God and His bride, the church. America is a great nation, but one that has turned away from God in many areas. When we turn from God and His Kingdom, another kingdom will flow in and fill the vacuum. America can rise or fall, but it is God’s church, the ecclesia, that Jesus died to bring to life and Who, resurrected, continues to give her life. Christians have only one King – Jesus. America is not our ‘king’.

I also felt in that moment that it makes little difference who wins the presidential election on November 3 – Donald Trump or Joe Biden – the church will survive and even thrive in the cultural revolution that has come, and can continue to radically alter life in America as we knew it, no matter who is elected president.

Here is what I mean by a cultural revolution:

Marxism and the Quest for Power

For several generations, beginning on college campuses all over America, the radical agenda of Marxism has been making its way into the heart and soul of American life and culture. Slowly at first, but accelerating in the last 10 years or so, a movement for equity, diversity, identity politics, and political correctness has morphed into a mainstream movement today we call ‘social justice’.

Except it is not about justice, at least in the sense of the word that most of us understand. Social justice is about redistribution of power, privilege, wealth and property, and opportunity.

In the Marxist view of the world, power is everything. According to Marx the amount of power in a society is constant – it cannot be created or destroyed. Because power is constant, the only way for the ‘oppressed’ to gain power is to take it from the ‘oppressor’. Marxists demand the transfer of power in a society to be rapid, and therefore, often violent. Marxists are not patient. They want change NOW! George Orwell wrote:

“They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship (or a totalitarian regime – my words) in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power” (George Orwell, 1984).

Social Justice Is the Cultural Revolution

So, what are the fundamentals of social justice?  In case you don’t know, these are their precepts (all quotes with page numbers are from the book ‘Live Not By Lies’ by Rod Dreher):

·       “Everything in life is understood through relationships of power. Social justice is the mission of reordering society to create more equitable (just) power relationships. Those who resist social justice are practicing “hate” and cannot be reasoned with or in any way tolerated, only conquered” (pg. 60).

Here are some real time, although admittedly, far-left minority examples:

This is a quote from a contributing writer for the New York Times, “You can’t reform the GOP who are now an extremist party. They have to be broken, burned down and rebuilt. When Biden is in power treat them like the active threats they are. If those who committed crimes aren’t punished they will be more emboldened”.

From a Fox News article, “Some have advocated for a ‘truth and reconciliation commission’ to go after those who have worked for the president . . . But some on the left attacked not only political types who might have worked with or for Trump and the Trump administration, but also the presidents rank-and-file supporters”.

Sounds like Lenin and Mao to me. At least intimidation to achieve total control. Hitler did this very well in the years leading up to WW 2 – intimidate and remove the opposition. And it is dangerous to say these opinions are in the minority and so dismiss them. Lenin and Hitler were minority powers, until they weren’t.

·       There is no such thing as objective truth, only power in the eyes of the social justice warrior. “Religious claims, philosophical arguments, political theories – all of these are veils concealing will to power . . . rationalizations for oppressors to hold power over the oppressed” (Dreher, pg. 61).

·       Social justice is rooted in identity politics. “In the cult of social justice, the oppressors are white, male, heterosexual, and Christian. The oppressed are racial minorities, women, sexual minorities, and religious minorities” (Dreher, pg. 61). Justice is . . .  what is due to an individual based on their group identity. The oppressors are ‘the enemy’.

·       All people who fall into the social justice category of oppressed are connected by virtue of their ‘oppression’ and should unite to oppress the oppressors. This is called intersectionality. “If one is not a member of an oppressed group, he or she can become an “ally” in the power struggle” (Dreher, pg. 62). In other words, they had better become an ally, or else.

·       Social justice warriors bend language to suit their subjective beliefs. For example, to them ‘justice’ does not mean what most Christians take it to mean. The same is true for equity and diversity. The tools and procedures of reason cannot be used to engage a social justice agenda. “As such, they consider that subjective beliefs to be a form of uncontested knowledge, and disagreement as an attack on their identity” (Dreher, pg. 63) and value as human beings. These perspectives are the elements of a religious cult, and the cult of social justice is what they worship. 

Is Soft Totalitarianism the Future of America?

As the evil of social justice ideology continues to invade the citadels of academia, entertainment, politics, corporations, and even the church, a form of soft totalitarianism is becoming a way of life in America, like the totalitarianism in China today or Eastern Europe under Soviet rule, but only with a softer touch. Already we are seeing academics fired or censored for even mildly disagreeing with social justice students. Average Americans know to keep certain political beliefs to themselves. Instead of freedom, there is fear in America today. Freedom of speech and religion have been severely eroded in just the last 12 months.

The Marxist social  justice movement’s goal is a better, ‘more just world’. This goal is to be achieved, like every totalitarian movement, through total control of every aspect of society, including the mind and soul of the people living under its boot. As the 20th century has repeatedly shown, totalitarian utopian dreams always end in crushing the human spirit, and in most cases widespread bloodshed.

One Czechoslovak father who lived in Prague during the Soviet occupation explained to his children, “There are some things more dangerous than the loss of political liberties . . . there is a difference between a dictatorship and totalitarianism . . . Dictatorships can make life hard for you, but they don’t want to devour your soul. Totalitarian regimes are seeking your souls” (Dreher, pg. 136).

This is what is facing America and the world today. All totalitarianism operates through manipulation, intimidation, and deception with the objective of total control or domination. As Mao Zedong famously said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” – an honest description of totalitarian manipulation and intimidation. But most importantly to me, as I wrote in previous posts, manipulation, intimidation, and deception with the intent to dominate are the marks of the spirit of witchcraft. 

I see all totalitarianism from a spiritual perspective. As I wrote in another post, Marxism is a satanic ideology. Every nation that embraced Marxism destroyed, or tried to destroy, God’s church, crushed the human spirit, stole joy, peace, and hope, and unleased massive evil. This is consistent with satan’s goal to steal, kill, and destroy – destroy the ministry of Christ, corrupt the gospel so people will turn away from Jesus, destroy God’s handiwork, and steal God’s glory – elevating satan’s throne above the “stars of God” to make himself “like the Most High”. It is pure evil.

The same is true with social justice totalitarianism – it might be a soft totalitarianism, but in this sense it is the same as every totalitarian regime. As long as Christians believe and follow the truth – Jesus and the word of God – social justice cannot achieve this objective of total control. Satan’s goal is to destroy the Church and the followers of Christ, and the fact that Christianity is ‘part of the problem’, means, to the Social Justice Warrior, it has to be eliminated and the truth of Jesus condemned as ‘hate speech’.

The Tree of Babylon

For the last several months I have been praying, researching, writing, and reading books about the spiritual issues facing America today. On a recent walk (before the election) I received a picture about what is happening today. In my mind I saw a tree and knew instinctively that this tree was growing in the heart and soul of America.

In my mind I saw a tree planted in the soil of the kingdom of the world, which has been called the kingdom of satan, because satan is the ruler of this world (John 12: 31 – 33; John 14: 30). The roots of the tree were the spirit of human pride, because pride is the root of all evil. The roots of this tree were sunk deep into the kingdom of the world where they tapped into a dark pool (a cesspool) sucking up the spirit of witchcraft, which was feeding or ‘nourishing’ the tree.

The trunk of the tree was Marxism, or neo-Marxism if you prefer, which is a satanic ideology, as I said above and also discussed in a previous post. This ideology is fueled by man’s flesh aka the Babel spirit, which is an anti-Christ spirit. The study notes in my NIV Bible say this about Babel, a Babylonian ziggurat, “At Babel rebellious man undertook a united and godless effort to establish for himself, by a titanic human enterprise, a world renown by which he would dominate God’s creation . . . there would be no limit to its unrestrained rebellion against God. The kingdom of man would displace and exclude the Kingdom of God.” – a good description of Marxism.

The branches and leaves of the tree are the various movements or elements that make up the intersectionality of social justice, including the Black Lives Matter organization (see my thoughts on the BLM organization in the previous post), abortion, radical Islam, radical feminism, the LGBTQ movement, deceptive media, cancel culture, the idea of white privilege, gender fluidity, the evil of critical race theory, etc. Many people, especially young people, in these movements are wounded, lost, lonely, despairing, depressed, and searching for some meaning in their lives. Like all of us, they need the Father’s love and emotional healing and spiritual deliverance through an encounter with the Holy Spirit. Where will they find these? They will find them in and through us, the Church!  

 I felt God say, “this is not the tree of life; it does not produce good fruit”. This tree has a name – its name is Babylon”. The spirit of Babylon produces lawlessness, chaos, deception, confusion, wickedness, corruption, evil, darkness, hatred, and death – the fruit of this spirit.

The image or the metaphor of a tree plays a prominent role in Scripture, usually in conjunction with worship on ‘high places’. For example:

“Destroy completely all the places on the mountains and on the hills and under every spreading tree where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods” (Deuteronomy 12: 3 NIV).

“Judah did evil in the eyes of the Lord. By the sins they committed they stirred up His jealous anger more than their fathers had done. They also set up for themselves high places, sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree” (1 Kings 14: 22, 23 NIV).

Writing about King Ahaz, “Unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God. He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire . . . He offered sacrifices and burned incense at the high places, on the hilltops, and under every spreading tree” (2 Kings 16: 2 – 4 NIV).

God gave Israel these specific instructions because He knew the human temptation to ‘fit in’, to belong, be accepted and liked. These needs are so strong that many will compromise and accommodate what God’s people should reject. The pull to align ourselves with the dominant culture, even if it denies God’s presence and power, is so strong that these warnings about ‘high places’ and ‘spreading trees’ are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago.

I see much of America today at the altar of social justice and the associated movements, rejecting, even hating the Triune God, setting out a plan to ‘fix’ the problems of the world apart from God, and worshiping under the spreading trees on high places. This tree, called Babylon, is not a tree of life – it is a tree of death. It is a picture of evil. As I said, this tree is already well rooted in the heart of our nation. It is an ideology that cancels all dissent. It allows no objections or divergent opinions – it is a totalitarian ideology. In the future this ‘religion’ of totalitarianism will infect most of the country, its citizens, and some (but not all) of the church, unless God mercifully moves in response to the repentance and prayers of His people. But, remember when someone asked Ellie Wiesel what he learned from the Holocaust, he replied: “When someone says they will kill you, believe them”.

But . . .

God told me, “My Church will be victorious”. How can this be? After I received the vision of the tree of Babylon, I received this Scripture: “The ax is already at the root of the tree, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3: 10). I share my thoughts about this in the next post.

 John