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Satan's Empire at War

Introduction
 
In the Third Angel’s cry, there is a distress call – God’s wrath is expected. That is then choreographed in Revelation 15–16 through the Vial Plagues. Puzzling – in only one place in the Apocalypse is Satan’s wrath directly addressed. Explosive hatred through his minions, however, is everywhere.
 
“Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time” (Revelation 12:12). This is the concern of this article.
 
Why is this evil demon and his followers so filled with fury?

1. He was cast out of heaven (Revelation 12:7-9). He lost his position.
2. There are “overcomers” who are successfully resisting his advances (Revelation 12:15-17). He’s losing his authority.
3. He now knows he has a short time to work. All his evil is soon to be halted. He will then be powerless.

This “short time” could allude prophetically to when the woman and the beast are reunited (1929) (Revelation 17:3) or when the sixth “head” of the beast that “is” is inaugurated (1978) (Revelation 17:10) – or even more likely, it applies to the last three and a half years of human history (cf. 11:2-3; 12:6, 14; 13:5), when “delay,” or the “tarrying time,” is no longer (Revelation 10:6).[2]
 
Knowing that his mission is to be curtailed (Revelation 20:1-2), he reacts by setting “all his agencies at work that men may be deceived, deluded, occupied, and entranced until the day of probation shall be ended, and the door of mercy forever shut.”[3]
 
What he does to the minds of human beings is further chronicled by expositor White and in many Biblical narratives.
 
“As Satan sees that his time is short, he leads men on to be more and more selfish and covetous, and then exults as he sees them wrapped up in themselves, close, penurious, and selfish. If the eyes of such could be opened, they would see Satan in hellish triumph, exulting over them, and laughing at the folly of those who accept his suggestions and enter his snares.”[4]

• “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (I Peter 5:8).
• “The locusts were not given permission to kill them, but only to torture them for five months, and their torture was like that of a scorpion when it stings a person” (Revelation 9:5 – NET – “them” refers to Satan’s minions).

This imagery reveals that Satan even attacks the wicked. The Greek says that it is so severe that they want to die – but are unable to. A time is reached when this rebel and his “angelic” agents have a fiendish drive to harm all of mankind.
 
The World Slouches Downward
 
Through the 1800s to the early 1900s a fundamental fracturing of numerous global ideals occurred. Charles Darwin elevated “theoretical science” that undermined the Biblical Creation story;” Karl Marx, with his atheistic bent, enamored those interested in revolutionary socialism; Pope Leo XI mirrored many Marxist theories under the guise of Catholic Social Doctrine in his 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum; Helena Blavatsky elevated mysticism to cultural intrigue; and Sigmond Freud introduced numerous thought concepts within psychoanalysis as he relegated religion to an illusion.

• The impact that these individuals had on the minds of educators, religionists, politicians and cultural leaders was colossal. Regression of spiritual values accelerated.
• Then in the 1920s came the rise of Cultural Marxism:
  
  This became an agenda-driven “process of destroying all traditions, languages, religions, individuality, government, family, law and order in order to re-assemble society in the future as a communist utopia. This utopia [would] … have no notion of gender, traditions, morality, god or even family or the state.”[5]

Satan’s agenda-driven strategy was morphing humanity into his nature. God was being displaced by honoring the worship of ideas and emotions.
 
The United States did not escape these influences. By the 1960s it began to lose the disciplinary tools of shame. Music became debased with words that were perverse. The fixation on self grew. Rebellion against authority spanned parenteral guidance to law enforcement personnel on the streets. Language became increasingly vulgar. Television promoted moral relativism. Michael Fuchs, then chairman of Time Warner Music, countered criticism of lower standards by saying “Offensive lyrics are the price you pay for freedom of expression.”[6]
 
The mind and emotional control of this country’s citizens by the “prince of this world” (John 12:31) fragmented moral restraints. We have been resolutely advised:
 
“… we are on Satan’s enchanted ground. Sleep not, sentinels of God; the foe is lurking near, ready at any moment, should you become lax and drowsy, to spring upon you and make you his prey.”[7]
 
“By every conceivable device, the foe is seeking to throw us off our guard. He may first attempt to deceive with smooth words and crafty insinuations; and if these fail, he proceeds to open violence. He has many a deep laid snare for unwary feet, and those who once become entangled find it almost impossible to extricate themselves. While he praises, flatters, and exalts some, he hurls his fiery darts at others. We must be on guard every moment. Days of peculiar trial, difficulty, and danger are before us.”[8]
 
The Birth of Non-judgmentalism
 
Paralleling the alarming permissive freedom penetrating our culture is the profound book, Death of Outrage by William J. Bennett. He noted that a liberal defense came from “judge not” (Matthew 7:1) and “don’t cast stones” (John 8:7). But he noted:

• This misuse of a Biblical text excuses and even defends sin.
• Jesus ended his discourse with the adulterous woman: “Go and sin no more.” That was left out.
• The “judge not” relates to attitudes of self-righteousness, an unloving spirit, hypercritical or hypocritical. Christ ends with, don’t give dogs what is sacred – or throw your pearls to pigs – all requiring ethical decisions. Moral judgments are a significant thread throughout the New Testament.[9]

The trends to simply grant forgiveness without apology, expressing repentance or even admission of guilt without rectifying the harm done comes close to justifying the wrong. That illustrates what cheap grace really means.

• Claims that “judgmentalism” is out of place in a pluralistic society is a secular defense.
• It protects one’s guilt and inserts cultural indifferences.
• John Silber was correct when he spoke, saying that all is an “invitation to mutual corruption.”[10]

The difference between right and wrong is clouded. This disarms one from Satan’s agenda and temptations. It leads to compromise and raises the unthinkable question: “Is it really that bad?” And that slowly leads to “tolerance.”

• Tolerance is not a Christian virtue.[11]
• Charity, justice, mercy, honesty and forgiveness are elevating virtues.

Proselytizing Evil
 
From tolerance comes embracing, then championing evil. Things like abortion-on-demand (even up to the moment of birth), judges banning the Ten Commandments in public places, exploitation of sex education (even in elementary schools), homosexuality (and now homosexual marriage) and rampant pornography put evil on a pedestal.

• The media has now become a “cultural accomplice” with mass manipulation of the mind through:
• Marketing techniques that project guilt. Fairness, generosity and tolerance are coveted qualities when in support of these evil agendas. It is a noble gesture when you accept immoral behavior.[12]

It is interesting that in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list as a mental disorder.
 
A public relations campaign began around this time that actually redefined sin.

1. Don’t refer to “abortion” – call it “choice.”
2. Promote the “rights” of being in America.
3. Make anyone who appeals to the Bible as using “hate speech.”
4. Maximize sympathy and victimization.
5. Celebrate those previously labeled as “immoral” as role models.
6. Create “hate crime” legislation to protect alternative behavior.
7. Promote intimidation against those who resist change.
8. Normalize “progressive” lifestyles in schools.

“Progressivism” became a catchall euphemism for socialism. Public schools, colleges and universities have been filled with “reformers,” pedaling socialism and alternative lifestyles. Such institutions are mostly out of the limelight and future generations lean further to the “left.”
 
The ultimate aim: discredit and silence any opposition. The outcome: the voice of Christianity is disgraced.
“As the second appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ draws near, satanic agencies are moved from beneath.… He [Satan] will exercise his power, and work upon the human imagination. He will corrupt both the minds and the bodies of men, and will work through the children of disobedience, fascinating and charming, as does a serpent. What a spectacle will the world be for heavenly intelligences! What a spectacle for God, the Creator of the world, to behold! The form Satan assumed in Eden when leading our first parents to transgress, was of a character to bewilder and confuse the mind. He will work in as subtle a manner as we near the end of earth's history. All his deceiving power will be brought to bear upon human subjects, to complete the work of deluding the human family.”[13]
 
The Road to National Disgrace
 
Patrick J. Buchanan’s book, Death of the West, notes that the original idealism of socialism failed to unite the workers of the world (an anticipated consequence). Marx’s apologists then concluded that these individuals had been poisoned by Christianity.

• This led to individuals in the west promoting the premise that one “can disobey God without consequences and become his own God.”[14]
• That assumption was propelled through moving of the socialistic Frankfurt School from Germany to New York in 1933. It was filled with neo-Marxists, atheistic scholars. Their philosophy quickly penetrated the thinking of numerous universities across America.

One of its philosophers, Georg Lukacs said: “I saw the revolutionary destruction of society as the one and only solution, … A worldwide overturning of values cannot take place without the annihilation of the old values and the creation of new ones by the revolutionaries.”[15]

• He wanted to destroy the family and Christianity.
• And he promoted licentiousness.

Another cohort, Antonio Gramsci, said: “Rather than seize power first and impose a cultural revolution from above, … Marxists in the West must first change the culture; then power would fall into their laps like ripened fruit.”[16]
 
Then comes another evil man, Herbert Marcuse: “In his book ‘Eros and Civilization’ [1955, 1966], … [he] advocated universal adoption of the Pleasure Principle, arguing that by rejecting Judeo-Christian culture, a new world of – are you ready for this? – polymorphous perversity would come into being. And sure enough, when the baby boom generation went to college, Marcuse became a rock star.”[17]
 
Erich Froom, another “comrade,” argued that differences between the sexes were not inherent. Educator Wilhelm Reich attacked the family structure as imperialism. Theodor Adorno taught that the patriarchal family was fascism.

• All these Frankfurt ideologues felt that destruction of the family was paramount to the agenda-driven chaos that would lead to ultimate control, where people would all act the same as directed by the central elite.
• This neo-Marxist movement was to lead to social utopia.

From spinoffs of this philosophical revolution came no-fault divorce, feminism, political correctness, transgenderism, homosexual rights, the abortion movement, children’s rights, black lives matter, multiculturalism, an antifamily spirit and a changed Democratic Party that promotes this neo-Marxism.
 
It should be clear by now that these cultural trends are a violation of and an attack on God’s Decalogue. Instead of contentment and joy that are fruits of Christianity, the left promotes chronic anger, encouragement of grievances, stoking resentments and making sure that America’s citizens are constantly upset and feeling victimized.[18]
 
“The whole energies of evil, as in the days of Noah, have gathered themselves together to make a final effort to obliterate the image of God from the souls of men.”[19]
 
Is it any wonder that socialist-trained Obama used behavioral scientists to “nudge” citizens toward certain behaviors that the government desired?[20]
 
Paul’s message to Timothy reverberates as chaos matures in today’s culture:
“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God ” (II Timothy 3:1-4).
 
How Minds are being Manipulated
 
How are Americans adjusting to, tolerating or even accepting the migration of non-vetted individuals from terrorist hotbeds, destroying statues of our founding fathers; the growing number of laws convicting those who do not adhere to political correctness; deranged men using women’s bathrooms, changing rooms and showers; and abortion up to the term of birth?
The techniques involve shaming, intimidation, demeaning and criticizing the good conscience of Americans. Examples:

1. Every time there is a mass shooting, the left immediately blames gun owners.
2. Criticizing a black individual for poor judgment or even a crime is racism.
3. If you disagree with abortion, you oppress women.
4. If you disagree with the government’s immigration policy, you are against all immigration.
5. If you oppose same-sex marriage, you are a bigot.

“Dr. George Simon, PhD, a psychologist and author of several books on how manipulative people ply their trade, including the best-seller ‘In Sheep’s Clothing’; says emotional manipulators rely on their victims having a better functioning conscience than the manipulators themselves.
 
“‘Shaming and guilt-tripping are without question the favorite tactics disturbed characters use to manipulate people with consciences that are more developed than theirs,’ he writes. ‘Individuals with disordered characters know full well that those with well-developed consciences tend to feel guilty easily if they think they’ve done something wrong. Such individuals also have a big sense of shame when they think they’ve behaved in a manner that reflects negatively on their character” [the reason they love to target Christians and the Christian Right].

“Here we see … liberalism’s great ingenuity: It seized proprietorship over innocence itself. It took on the power to grant or deny moral legitimacy across society.

 “Leftists perpetually strive to elevate government to the status of a god, just as they try desperately to perfect man by restructuring society by force, rather than through individual repentance and inner transformation.[21]
 
It is intriguing, perhaps fearsome, that an end-time beast that comes out of the earth “speaks like a dragon” (Revelation 13:11).

• This nation, identified by many as the United States, is increasingly governed by policy that caters to emotions.
• These emotions, spawned from evil agendas, undermine liberty, capitalism and the moral framework that this nation was built on.

Satan’s use of United States Leaders
 
In 1947, in the Everson v. Board of Education case, Justice Hugo Black, writing for the majority opinion, introduced a new legal principle: “‘The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.’
 
“Ever since then, the high court’s rulings have progressively and relentlessly aimed at removing every vestige of Christian language, imagery, or symbolism from public property.

“From  the decisions of the 1960s outlawing prayer and religious instruction in the schools to today’s surreal court battles over whether it’s okay for school kids to pledge allegiance ‘Under God,’ today’s judiciary interprets the First Amendment in a radically different way than did its predecessors during America’s first one and a half centuries.”[22]
 
In 2003 Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, proclaimed that she and her fellow justices are now looking to international law to guide their decisions.”[23]
 
In 2003 Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer said in a television interview: “We see all the time … how the world really … is growing together.” “Through commerce, through globalization, through the spread of democratic institutions, through immigration to America, it’s becoming more and more one world of many different kinds of people. And how they’re going to live together across the world will be the challenge, and whether our Constitution and how it fits into the governing documents of other nations, I think will be a challenge for the next generations.”[24]
 
Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the majority opinion in 1973 regarding Roe v. Wade. As of 2016 there were 57,762,169 confirmed legal abortions in the United States. Each of these killed a developing human being!
 
The highest court of the land has stepped into uncharted waters. These decisions affect the very fabric that made this country’s fortunes thrive. The original admission by our founders that man was “under God,” implying His supreme rulership, has been crippled.

• In their attempt to stand between good and evil on some neutral ground
• They view values through the window of feelings and emotions.
• That always appeals to the sinful bent of man’s heart.

“The Lord gave men minds in order that He might control them. But Satan has come in with a determination to control the minds of men.”[25], [26] They set light and truth for darkness and error.
 
Brilliant Attorney David Horowitz excoriated U.S. District Court Judge Orlando Garcia’s decision to block a Texas law, when he said in strange judicial logic, “Who needs a constitution when we have political arguments?”[27] Politics? What politics? The politics of hatred, feelings or coercion!
 
Disinformation is Deception and is Satanic
 
“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived”
(II Timothy 3:13).
 
In a free society the media serves as an important conduit to disseminate information. It used to be a watchdog for truth, a vital check-and-balance against false claims, especially from the government.

• That has changed to support and promote unethical and evil individuals and agencies through “fake news.” In turn, noble work and ethical leaders have been unjustly denigrated.
• To affirm this false reality, most of the main stream media do not hesitate to attack those who uphold truth as being delusional.

This socialist-driven evil agenda has penetrated the U.S. education system.

• “Fake news, when codified over time, becomes fake history – which is what we find, for example, in the ubiquitous but irredeemably dark, America-hating ‘history’ textbook by Howard Zinn, ‘A People’s History of the United States.’ This book is routinely assigned as required reading for our children throughout America’s public high schools and colleges. According to Zinn’s ‘fake history,’ America is at core an evil, racist, predatory nation that has grown in wealth and power only by exploiting minorities throughout its bloody history. Scant reference can be found to the enormous, unparalleled good that America has done for the world, its incredible generosity toward other nations, the hundreds of thousands of young lives sacrificially given for other in wars like WWII, and the multiplicity of ways America have elevated, fed, supported, protected and liberated so much of the rest of the world.”[28]
• Fake messaging means that someone is deciding what is to be perceived as truth – whether it is opinion, real or psychological manipulation.

In 2013 Lt. General Ion Mibai Pacepa (former Soviet bloc intelligence official) joined with Ronald Rychlak (laywer and law professor at the University of Mississppi Law School) to write: “Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism.”

• They detailed the principles of deceit that were used in the Soviet Union, which now have infiltrated into the United States and are being used in politics, by professors, the mainstream news and at numerous levels in the private and governmental sectors.
• The World Council of Churches has been in strong accomplice to this agenda.[29]

This manipulation of reality has promoted ideas such as: Islam is a peaceful religion, man-made global warming is a settled science, the constitution demands separation of church and state, America is a racist nation, and homosexuality is a sexual preference that is genetically driven.

• Jesus urged intense awareness and watchfulness against being influenced by falsehood: “Take heed that no man deceive you” (Matthew 24:4).
• Expositor White projected deceitful charges against Sabbathkeepers as we near the end.
  
  “Satan puts his interpretation upon events, and they think, as he would have them, that the calamities which fill the land are a result of Sunday-breaking. Thinking to appease the wrath of God, these influential men make laws enforcing Sunday observance. They think that by exalting this false rest day higher and still higher, compelling obedience to the Sunday law, the spurious sabbath, they are doing God service. Those who honor God by observing the true Sabbath are looked upon as disloyal to God, when it is really those who thus regard them who are themselves disloyal because they are trampling under foot the Sabbath originated in Eden.”[30]
• Jesus prophesied concerning that end-time issue, stating that it was an “abomination” (Matthew 24:15), and urged the study of Daniel 8–12, where this is highlighted in relationship to the Sabbath.

Deception leads to fraud. Example: It has now been reported that, in 2016, 248 U.S. counties had more voters than eligible citizens.[31]
 
Fraud leads to hatred – then, attempting to harm, disengage or even kill those who might uncover or report evil.
 
Adopting Fascism – Marxism
 
A growing number of leaders claim fairness, tolerance, diversity and the freedom to speak out – but act totally the opposite.
 
In 2008 Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism:

• Notes that the “fascist label” is used by liberals to defame almost anything they don’t like, as they do with a myriad of “berate epithets” through “identity politics.”[32]
• What is this fascism?
  
  “Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic … It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the ‘problem’ and therefore defined as the enemy.”[33]

The outcome:

1. Redefining truth and what is right
2. Censoring criticism – can’t tolerate dissent
3. Challenging Biblical “sin” through intimidation and coercion
4. Exclude or shut down opposition[34]

The left’s “tolerance” has been transformed into totalitarianism (aka intolerance).[35]

1. A simple case in point: In 2017 Adam Wernstein, an elite liberal journalist for Gawker, headlined an article: “Arrest Climate-change Deniers.”[36] Yet clear evidence has emerged that climate change has been a hoax.
2. Another illustration: Pastor Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries, Temecula, California, was sued by a political activist group from Uganda, under an alleged international law. He criticized homosexuality. They were homosexuals. U.S. District Judge Michael Posner let the case move forward as a “crime against humanity.” The Uganda activists were funded by George Soros’ Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

• A major issue: How can international law take precedence over the U.S. Constitution?
• The case was expensive and took five years to settle, but was finally dismissed in June of 2017 in favor of the pastor.[37]

3. Headlines: Amazon.com under attack. For years the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has published a list of people and organizations that they hate, called “hate groups.” The SPLC contacted Amazon, asking why they do business with some of their “hate groups” like PayPal.

The SPLC receives millions of dollars annually. Its money and powerful leaders have a cozy relationship with the media and the government. The outcome of this now legal challenge is uncertain (January 2018), but they tend to create expensive legal cases where often to “give in” is cheaper than to fight in the courts.[38]
 
The minds of so many “movers and shakers” – leaders, politicians, the elite and even educators in America – are increasingly bent on evil, yet charging evil on the innocent. Satan’s kingdom is restless, irritable and coercive. We reflect:
 
“For thousands of years Satan has been experimenting upon the properties of the human mind, and he has learned to know it well. By his subtle workings in these last days, he is linking the human mind with his own, imbuing it with his thoughts; and he is doing this work in so deceptive a manner that those who accept his guidance know not that they are being led by him at his will. The great deceiver hopes so to confuse the minds of men and women, that none but his voice will be heard.”[39]
 
“It is a law of the human mind that by beholding we become changed. Man will rise no higher than his conceptions of truth, purity, and holiness. If the mind is never exalted above the level of humanity, if it is not uplifted by faith to contemplate infinite wisdom and love, the man will be constantly sinking lower and lower…. The wickedness of men [before the flood] was open and daring, justice was trampled in the dust, and the cries of the oppressed reached unto heaven.[40]
 
The hearts of most citizens of the world are beguiled by the enticements of Satan. His agenda is magnetic and deceptive to the “natural” mind. An amazing, hopeful prospect for some is nestled in John’s apocalypse. There, saints are being sealed and then saints surround the throne of God who have come out of earth’s final tribulation – too numerous to count (Revelation 7)! Might that be thousands – even millions – or more?