Introduction
In his epistle to the Church at Corinth, the apostle Paul made it clear that the Church of God was engaged in a spiritual war. II Corinthians 10:3-6 says:
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not wage battle according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.
This spiritual war wasn’t new in the first century when the apostle wrote the letters to the Corinthians. Rather, this war began in the Garden of Eden by means of a weaponized lie. Satan’s plan, of course, was to persuade Adam and Eve to believe his lie so that they would stop trusting God. His plan worked, and his strategy has remained unchanged since the Garden: to provide a deceptive alternative to God’s truth so that people can believe in something else in place of God. Hence, there has been a conspiracy against God’s truth since the beginning of time. My plan in this article is to expose three specific, modern manifestations of this conspiracy so that the people of God will be forewarned and thus forearmed. These three specific manifestations are State soteriology, climate change and the digitization of life.
I will exposit II Corinthians 10:3-6 next, but before I do, allow me to quote (with edits) part of an article I wrote in September 2020 called “Antonio Gramsci and the Narrative Behind the Narratives.” I think what I wrote three and a half years ago explains much in our modern world. The only thing that has changed is that what was hazy back then has come into greater focus now.
“Antonio Gramsci was a 20th-century Italian philosopher who didn’t think Karl Marx’s Marxist ideology went far enough. In many ways, you could even say Gramsci looked down on Marxism because it was too simplistic. You see, Gramsci was smart enough to see that society is not built primarily on economics. It’s built on culture, values and morals. In a society, people aren’t primarily separated by economic relations; they are primarily unified by common ideas and morals. I don’t think of my neighbor as a member of “the proletariat,” I think of him as Frank who lives in Queens, just like me; I think of him as a man who wants to leave a legacy for his children, just like me. Where Marx and Gramsci did agree is that they wanted to remake society in their ideological image, but what’s key is that Gramsci saw that changing a society’s culture, not its economic organization, was the key to transforming that society. In other words, you change how people think and see the world from within. The goal is to nudge them to adopt a set of cultural values separate and distinct from the prevailing culture. Consequently, when a man sees the world around him as having values radically different from his own, what he will now do—on his own volition—is seek to change the prevailing values in favor of his, or support candidates who will have the power to enact change to the same effect. In other words, if you control what a man thinks, then you control the man, because as a man thinks within himself, so he is. The question now is, how do you go about controlling what this man thinks so you can control him? And the answer is, by creating a narrative.
Cultural change does not happen through violent revolution, because people will resist and a violent revolution is not agreeable. Not to mention, the group using physical violence loses all moral credibility. What you now do, as Gramsci says, is slowly change the culture over time so that, at a tipping point, enough individuals will think as you do and therein help to bring about sweeping change. And by “slowly change,” what Gramsci had in mind was infiltration, deception, and manipulation over decades. The point was never to say, “We want to overthrow the system.” The point was to promote the narrative, and the prophets of said narrative began to appear in all those spheres that commanded influence over what people thought.
Consequently, institutions would cultivate Gramscian intellectuals whose values were always critical of the status quo. These intellectuals need not be professors or PhDs. In the modern world, they can be anyone who has a platform. Hence, these intellectuals could be members of the clergy, philosophers or those in academics; they can also be in entertainment, sports, business or politics. Regardless of the field, the point is that the corruption of the status quo is so pervasive and deep that the solution demands a complete takeover. A path to overthrow the existing order begins when the cultural proletariat claims to be a ruling class in the political, cultural and moral domains. The next step is to gain political power and transform society—influence precedes authority.
But wait a minute. Nothing that I’ve said so far is at all revolutionary. Any group of people who thinks there’s a cultural hegemony can use voluntary persuasion to nudge the hearts and minds of people to think differently. And if they do influence others by open dialogue and free exchange, then what’s the big deal? The big deal is that Antonio Gramsci identified what he thought was the major obstacle to a sweeping Marxist-type revolution in the West. As I mentioned, Gramsci understood that people did not see themselves as being separated from one another based upon ideology. Gramsci saw that the glue that held traditional Western culture together was biblical Christianity. It is Christianity that laid the foundation of our customs and traditions. For example, from a Christian worldview, all people have inalienable freedoms that are bestowed upon them by God Himself. These rights are not privileges granted by the State. From a Christian worldview, there is a universal, transcendent and objective morality that defines what is right and wrong for all people, everywhere, in all places. Christianity defines what a family is—a man, his wife and their children—and uplifts the family as the core social unit in society. Christianity also ordains both the Church and the State as institutions, but it neither advocates mixing of the two nor allows the sphere of operation of one to encroach on another. Christianity also recognizes individual, private ownership. Two of the Ten Commandments—not to steal and not to covet—imply that something else is rightfully owned by someone else and therefore, in God’s eyes, you ought not to take it away from them nor lust after it.
So, Gramsci postulated, in order to overthrow Western civilization, what must first be accomplished is to get rid of Christianity. Then, once the real, Christian God is out of the picture, man can do whatever is right in his own eyes.
In Gramsci’s view, the only way to nudge a Marxist-inspired proletariat revolution would be to make the West as godless as possible so that their faith in the Judeo-Christian moral system would crumble.
Thus, there is one big metanarrative: the de-Christianization of the West and the overthrow of the authority of God. [Yet] if the Christian foundation is destroyed, what remains will not be a vacuum. It will be exchanged for something else. This is how deception always works: the truth of God is suppressed, and in place of God’s truth, something else is substituted. What will remain is a new standard of so-called “truth” that has nothing to do with the objective truth at all. The new standard of truth will be defined for you by the narrative(s). Without God, a person is now autonomous and free to simply do what he or she desires, so long as it does not go against the narrative.”
Exposition
In 2024, for the Christian living in the United States, what is evident is that the fruits of Gramscian cultural transformation are everywhere. That is, our modern society is progressively becoming more anti-God. This is apparent, for example, in the spirit of the age seeking to change how we think about objective morality, what it means to be human, who has ultimate control over our own bodies, what it means to be a man or a woman, who has authority over children, what marriage is and what constitutes a normal family. The West was built upon a foundation of Judeo-Christian values, and the disintegration of the West invariably entails the destruction of these values and their consequent replacement with godless values. But let us be mindful that this cultural war tends not to involve physical violence but is rather a struggle that takes place on the battlefield of the mind. In other words, as previously quoted, if you control what a man thinks, then you control the man, because as a man thinks within himself, so he is.
This brings us back to our text. Again, II Corinthians 10:3-6 says:
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not wage battle according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.
These verses have relevance to our discussion of the Gramscian narrative and its cultural assault because the core of the issue is not in fact culture change: it is a spiritual war against divine truth. The modern Christian is not primarily fighting a political, economic or social battle against natural opponents. It would therefore be a mistake for Christians to target our ideological opponents when our opponents have their aim on God Himself. For as the text says, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not wage battle according to the flesh.” At the root of the battle are knowledge, thoughts, ideas, ideologies and philosophies that are designed to attack and take the place of divine truth; hence, “We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God.” Satan’s lies animate every figurative shot fired by the forces of darkness. And, as mentioned in the introduction, every lie has one overriding premise: “Don’t believe God. He’s not trustworthy.” Unbelief is the essence of all sin. Yet not trusting God means you are left to rely on Satan’s lies. Satan, however, is not a loving Father but a murderer and the father of lies (John 8:44). He delights in the death and destruction of you, your spouse, your children, your extended family and your church. Satan hates you but still poisons you with a smile.
Beloved, this is what spiritual warfare is: a battle over truth. And where is the battle raging? In your mind, where your thoughts are. We are thus “destroying arguments and … taking every thought captive.” II Corinthians 10:4 says, “[F]or the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.” The Greek word for “fortresses” (ὀχύρωμα or ochurōma) would convey to the first-century reader the thought of an intimidating stronghold. As John MacArthur comments on this verse:
“Corinth, like most major cities in Greece, had an acropolis. Located on a mountain near the city, the acropolis was a fortified place into which the inhabitants could retreat when attacked. Ochurōma (fortresses) was also used in extrabiblical Greek to refer to a prison. People under siege in a fortress were imprisoned there by the attacking forces. The word was also used to refer to a tomb.”
Consequently, when the apostle Paul talks about fortresses, he’s talking about spiritual prisons; in other words, arguments and opinions that keep the mind hostage. Let us not forget that Adam and Eve (and all of us with them) fell because of an argument; they degenerated into sin because an idolatrous idea captivated their thinking. Accordingly, when we are talking about fighting in the spiritual war, it is a battle of divine truth against secular lies. Again, as John MacArthur comments on II Corinthians 10:3-6:
“Fleshly weapons cannot successfully assault the formidable strongholds in which sinners have entrenched themselves. Such impotent weapons cannot bring about the destruction of those fortresses, which Paul defined specifically as speculations (logismos), a general word referring to any and all human or demonic thoughts, opinions, reasonings, philosophies, theories, psychologies, perspectives, viewpoints, and religions. The fortresses in view here are not demons, but ideologies. The notion that spiritual warfare involves direct confrontation with demons is foreign to Scripture.… The battle is rather with the false ideologies men and demons propagate so that the world believes them. Doomed souls are inside their fortresses of ideas, which become their prisons and eventually their tombs—unless they are delivered from them by belief in the truth.
Paul further defined sinners’ strongholds of ideas as “every lofty thing”—that is, any unbiblical system of thought exalted as truth—that is “raised up against the knowledge of God.” There is the key. Spiritual warfare is not a battle with demons. It is a battle for the minds of people who are captive to lies that are exalted in opposition to Scripture. In 1 Corinthians 3:20, he called them the useless reasonings of the worldly wise—all the anti-biblical ideologies, false religions, and pseudo gospels spawned by Satan.”
Furthermore, the spiritual prisons that the apostle writes about are indeed arguments, but they are not merely strongholds that restrain thinking; rather, they are weapons of mass destruction whose goal is to destroy thinking: in other words, the death of the mind (menticide) so that someone else can think for you. The world tends to refer to this process as brainwashing. Any adult is quick to discern that prisons are places that are built not to promote life, but rather to destroy it. And so, what may begin as a mental prison eventually transforms into a tomb as the person inside withers away. Notice the inversion: Satan intends to subjugate and then destroy you with idolatrous thoughts. The adversary does not want anyone to think clearly about sin. He wants to keep people confused so that he can distract and disarm them. Consequently, all unbelievers fortify themselves in a mental castle in which they attempt to hide from the true knowledge of God. God, on the other hand, wants to set you free so that you can use the mind He gave you, think freely and live abundantly. In John 8:31-32 Jesus says:
If you continue in My word, then you are truly My disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
How to Fight
Even though Christ could have used force to conquer the world, He didn’t. Instead, He chose to preach the kingdom of God. And in the Great Commission, He instructed His disciples to go out into the world and teach and baptize, not to kill, conquer or subjugate (Matthew 28:16-20). Essentially, then, with forever at stake, Christ told His followers to fight with the truth. This tells us that when our eyes are opened to see that eternity matters more than the present, it is in fact true that our most important battles are won and lost with arguments. Thus, to battle sin (e.g., godless religions, opinions, beliefs and philosophies), or a narrative that is anti-God, is to battle unbelief or to destroy arguments. The only offensive weapon in the Christian soldier’s armory is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). God’s Word is divine truth which is “divinely powerful” and the only suitable weapon for the destruction of the enemies’ strongholds.
Hence, how we fight in a spiritual war is simple: with the Word of God, which is divine truth breathed out to us. Again, as MacArthur says:
“Spiritual warfare is an ideological conflict, fought in the mind by assaulting the proud fortresses of ideas that sinners erect against the truth.”
Truth is light that both exposes the lie for what it is and also corrects so that a person knows what they ought to be thinking. This is what the apostle Paul refers to in II Timothy 3:16-17:
All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work. (italics mine)
God’s truth transforms people by the renewing of their minds (Romans 12:2). And so, the goal of our warfare is to change how people think; in other words, “taking every thought captive” they have and making it no longer captive to a damning ideology, but rather “captive to the obedience of Christ.” The Greek verb for taking captive (aichmalotizo) literally means “to take captive with a spear.” This means that when the Christian realizes what is truly at stake, they do not “play nice” with godless ideologies that seek to kill people. Rather, using God’s truth, believers smash enemy fortresses to the ground, march the prisoners out and point them to Christ. The most loving thing we can do is never to remain silent while we watch others march toward their own destruction. Instead, we act to “[snatch] them out of the fire” (Jude 23).
Practical Applications
Now that I have established a biblical framework, I will briefly describe three secular ideologies that—in my thinking—are pervasive and have thus imprisoned the minds of many people. Those three secular ideologies are State soteriology, climate change and the digitization of life. The latter two flow outward from the first. And, because said ideas have so darkened the minds of so many, they have consequently formulated a worldview in which these ideas are of first importance. The inevitable danger, of course, of subjugating the Creator for the sake of creation is truth-suppression and idolatry.
When I refer to State soteriology as a doctrine, what I am referring to is the secular idea that governmental power—whether local, national or international—will redeem us. Said thinking works as follows: The State defines our greatest problems for us. The same authority also offers a uniform solution to said problem and, typically, said solutions are enacted by force. There are no alternative remedies because, ultimately, ideology is the point, not concrete solutions. And so they say, “If you don’t go along with our prescriptions, we will use our power to hurt you.”
State soteriology is a doctrine based on multiple lies, but the biggest lie supporting this heresy is that the State can act as a redeemer. For example: “The State can save you from poverty. Trust us. We can fix this,” or “The State can save you from racism. Trust us. We can fix this,” or “The State can make you a better person. Trust us. We can fix you.” Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Christ and Christ alone redeems (John 14:6), and He is the only One who can solve humankind’s greatest problem: How can you get right with God? Hence, if any ideology operates based on the false idea that earthly concerns matter more than eternity, then that ideology—sooner or later—will self-destruct. Properly speaking, all authority comes from God (Romans 13:1), and so no authority on earth operates autonomously from the Creator of the universe. According to God, the State was never ordained to save anyone or anything. In fact, properly speaking, the State was never ordained to solve earthly problems. According to the New Testament, the only thing the State is supposed to do is maintain law and order; that is, it bears the sword to punish evil-doers and to protect those who do good (Romans 13:2-7). And who defines what is good and evil? Not the State. God defines what is right and wrong, which means that, according to divine truth, the State is also supposed to be a moral State. If the State is immoral, then it is an illegitimate authority.
If the State is protecting those people who do good, it means that those individuals are the ones solving problems in the political, economic and social spheres. Truly, there are some who may argue that just because the Bible is silent about the State endeavoring to correct human problems, that doesn’t necessarily preclude such action. Well, using the same faulty logic, I could also argue that Jesus was silent about Buddhism in the Great Commission, and that it would therefore be permissible to preach and teach Buddhism alongside the gospel.
When I think back to the Covid fiasco of 2020 to the present, I am now—in retrospect—able to see the ideology of State soteriology parsed out more clearly: “There is a life-threatening, deadly virus that can harm all of us. We want you to be afraid so that you will then trust us. After all, we can fix this.” But consequently, “trusting us” meant giving up personal freedom, bodily autonomy and the normal we had become used to. In fact, after a few months, the so-called health crisis was the first “pandemic” in history that was not self-evident to everyone; this is why the virus did not sustain the pandemic, but rather it was supported by mass indoctrination on the basis of testing as well as media censorship. If those things had not been in place, many people would not in fact have known they were in the middle of an acute health crisis. Psychological shock led to loss of critical thinking, which led to the acceptance of a new normal in the absence of proper discernment. The shock of the so-called pandemic cannot be minimized, because an influential, shocking event can serve as a unifying force. Hence, the Covid crisis consequently enabled the birth of a novel iteration of an authoritarian State equipped with a full array of new digital capabilities that were designed for perpetual surveillance. After all, a public health emergency has the best chance to bring about consent. Why? Because there is no formal “opponent” facing charges who can provide alternative information to refute an organized narrative. Hence, bioterrorism is an ideal threat, because it only takes one person to cause a catastrophe.
In the end, the Covid “pandemic” was never about a virus. It was about the biopolitical seizure of power (a term used by author Kees Van der Pijl in his book States of Emergency), reaching deep into the sovereignty of the individual. This seizure involved a whole range of forms of violence. The Christian must be mindful of this reality because what is developing now—by means of the World Health Organization and their recommended pandemic prevention plan—is that the foundation is being laid for a global biopolitical seizure of power, in contrast to the previous nation-level biopolitical seizure of power. In fact, the seizure of power in 2020 and beyond was so violent, the State—in shutting down churches all over the United States—spit in God’s face and told Him, “You have no authority while we reign.” Sadly, many willingly accepted such seizures and violence because they believed that the State was in the right and that the State would save them. They believed that a natural phenomenon—a virus—was the most important thing. As a result, they believed the lie and many of the cultish virtue signals the lie demanded as tribute.
Essentially what happened in the spring of 2020 hit the accelerator in the car on the road to authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is the ultimate manifestation of State soteriology because it assumes both that the State is God and that it can therefore control all aspects of life. Authoritarianism is anti-God for this very fact: it seeks total control because it wants to take the place of God. Authoritarianism is also alluded to in the Bible’s first book, where the people sought to ascend up to heaven, make a name for themselves and protect their legacy. Accordingly, in Genesis 11:4, before the people started to build the Tower of Babel, they reasoned to themselves and said:
Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of all the earth.
It must not be missed that the people used bricks and mortar to build their edifice. In other words, they cooperated using technology to create a monument for their own glorification (more on technology later). The result of this idolatrous endeavor was divine judgment: the tower was never built, people were confused and divided, and the very thing they were trying to avoid—being scattered—is the sentence they received. It’s no mistake that the historical narrative of Babel is in the Bible’s first book, because in this account, the reader is given insight into what is to come throughout history: people, as a function of their fallen nature, will come together and fruitlessly attempt to usurp God and control the world around them. Babel foreshadowed authoritarianism, but neither the State nor man is sovereign. Only God is sovereign. Only He is the King of kings, and only His truth will stand forever. What God says is right will always be right. What men (and thus the State) say must always be filtered by the Word of God.
Divine truth repeatedly testifies to God’s sovereignty:
Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (Psalm 115:3, ESV)
I know that [God] can do all things, and that no purpose of [His] can be thwarted. (Job 42:2, ESV)
Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. (Proverbs 19:21, ESV)
The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all. (Psalm 103:19, ESV)
For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My plan will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure. (Isaiah 46:9-10)
And so, the way we fight in the spiritual war against authoritarianism is to assert and live out the truth that God and God alone is sovereign.
The second secular ideology that has imprisoned people is climate change. Of course, when I say “climate change,” I am not referring to the mere fact that the climate varies or moves in cycles, which has been happening since the beginning of time. What I am referring to is the ideology that because of what human beings are doing—that is, emitting more carbon—the rate at which the climate is accelerating is putting us on a course toward destruction. Furthermore, when I talk about those who ascribe to the ideology of climate change, I am not referring to those who hold on to the biblical idea of stewardship for the environment, meaning embracing the fact that God gave man the earth and its resources for man and thus that we ought not to abuse or exploit our divine gift.
The secular ideology of climate change essentially says the greatest threat to humankind is ourselves as a function of what we are doing to the environment. There is no consideration of sin, redemption, Christ or the kingdom of God. Still, climate change has a spiritual sense about it because we are called to atone for our collective sins. We worship “mother earth” and sacrifice ourselves. Ironically, although we are the cause of the problem, men have no dilemma in holding on to the idea that we can solve it. Climate change (like Darwinian evolution by natural selection) is more than a hoax: it is a complete inversion of the creation mandate and a total denial of God’s providence in the created order. Climate change rejects what God says and substitutes the lie that the planet rules over us. Let us consider Genesis 1:26-31. The clear hierarchy is that God rules over man, who in turn rules over creation.
Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.” So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every animal of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
And as far as God is concerned about changes in the climate, He promised Noah after the flood that He will not destroy the world with water ever again (Genesis 9:11). Even more, He also makes a promise and affirms that until the end of history, the weather, seasons and climate will not cease and will continue to cycle as they always have, because God is sovereign over climate. In Genesis 8:22 God says:
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
The prophets of climate change say there are too many people on the planet, and that fewer people would therefore be a good thing. But God says, “Be fruitful and multiply.” The prophets of climate change say, “We have to save mother earth.” God says the earth does not need saving, and “mother earth” does not exist. In fact, to believe in that idol is paganism. The One who does exist is the Creator, who refers to Himself as a heavenly Father. Climate change invariably involves bigger and bigger government, which seeks to secure for itself more money, more power and more control over your life. God has already set people free to subdue the earth, not to live in subjection to it. And let us not forget that for the most zealous disciples of the climate change ideology, there is an ingrained hatred of people, the image-bearers of God. This hatred runs so deep that—in the interest of saving the planet—suicide and the destruction of life become reasonable. Why? Because now our collective carbon footprint is smaller. Beloved, God has already told us how the world ends: by divine judgment, not because of human activity.
And so, the way we fight in the spiritual war against climate change is to first realize that it is a pagan ideology based on an antithesis of divine truth. We also assert and live out the truth that Christ is of first importance, not the things of this world.
The third and final ideological plane upon which the current spiritual war is being fought is technological—specifically, the digitization of life. What has accelerated since the spring of 2020 is the digitization of all humanity, where face-to-face interactions have been replaced with digital interfaces. Consider how the following (as examples) have all become increasingly more common since Covid began: remote business, distance learning, telehealth and online retail. Superficially, all of these things are championed in the name of access, convenience and safety. But a more nefarious intent also exists: to divide society into numbers (i.e., IP addresses) that can be monitored around the clock so that those who control access can get closer and closer to total information awareness. Of course, without digitization, there is a limit to how much intelligence can be gathered. And with technology being outside of a person, they can always withdraw (e.g., by turning their phone off) or go the extra length of having a face-to-face interaction. Accordingly, what I believe may be the next phase of this digitization is putting the technology inside of people (e.g., mRNA gene therapy or other injectables) under the guise of public health. This would grant intimate access to roughly 7.5 billion human beings who could be continuously monitored without their having to do anything. The progressive digitization of life means gathering so much data on you and about you that you can be manipulated all the more easily.
Yet I believe one of the most dangerous aspects of the war to digitize all life comes in the form of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. CBDCs are in essence digital money that is not tangible. You cannot hold a CBDC coin, but you can hold one in a virtual vault on your smartphone. The difference, however, between a CBDC and the bills you hold in your wallet is that the former is mere privilege and your access to that privilege may be suspended at any time. You actually don’t own your digital currency; you are simply given permission to use it. The digitization of money has the potential to create a system of control never before seen in human history, one that impacts nearly every aspect of your life because money is a medium of exchange that facilitates almost everything we do. If a group, organization or central bank controls your money—and thus can “delete” your currency on a whim—then they effectively own you.
Here is what Revelation 13 says about the beast from the sea. We don’t have to get particular about what the beast is, but let me just generally say the beast is an iteration of secular power. The apostle John writes in Revelation 13:5-8:
A mouth was given to [one of the beast’s heads] speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authority to act for forty-two months was given to him. And he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, that is, those who dwell in heaven.
It was also given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them, and authority was given to him over every tribe, people, language, and nation. All who live on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written since the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slaughtered. (italics mine)
The simple lesson to glean from these verses is that the beast is a powerful force that is anti-God and anti-Church, and whose power has global reach: authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. What is described next is the beast from the earth or the false prophet. The prophet’s given job is to convince people to worship the first beast. But pay attention to Revelation 13:13-17:
[The false prophet] performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down out of the sky to the earth in the presence of people. And he deceives those who live on the earth because of the signs which it was given him to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who live on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life. And it was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast would even speak and cause all who do not worship the image of the beast to be killed. And he causes all, the small and the great, the rich and the poor, and the free and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, and he decrees that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.
These verses tell us that the false prophet is an idolater, a deceiver and a murderer. These verses also tell us that the false prophet creates an economic system—which uses a mark synonymous with the beast—that controls what people are able to buy and sell. Now, am I saying that CBDCs are the mark of the beast? I am not. A proper exposition of Revelation 13 is beyond my goal here. All I am saying is that God gave us the Book of Revelation for a reason. He was preparing His people and giving them wisdom so that, regardless of when they lived, they would be able to think biblically about the world around them. They would also be able to see the triumph of the Lamb as an already-fulfilled reality that gives meaning to all of human history until the Lamb returns. And thus, in God’s Word, what we see is a global economic system run by an anti-God force that controls how people use money. The danger for the Church, of course, is that if they are doing godly things, they can easily be exiled by a godless system that now uses its own perverse morals to determine who is eligible to participate in financial transactions. That economic system certainly sounds a lot like what CBDCs are capable of.
And so, the way we fight in the spiritual war against the digitization of life is to first realize that technology is the bait that conceals the hook of control. We thus assert and live out the truth that while the Caesars of this world may control money, they do not control us.
Beloved, the point of all of these practical applications is to reveal that Covid wasn’t about a virus, climate change is not about the environment and CBDCs will not be about whatever scapegoat or crisis is used to inaugurate their rollout. All of these things are about ungodly control. Any unregenerate person in the world can come to that conclusion by reason alone. But it takes a child of God to see there is a much greater spiritual force that is anti-God (and thus anti-people) animating all of these perverse ideologies. The resultant solution is spiritual: the preached gospel changes people on the inside, which then begets changed thinking and behavior.
Conclusion: Hope Because of God’s Providence
In summary, as I hope I have made clear, the people of God have always been involved in spiritual warfare. Our battles are over truth, and the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh. We fight with God’s Word, we prepare our minds by meditation on the Scriptures and we have our hearts and characters molded through prayer and fellowship with the saints. This is our spiritual “training” that equips us to fight subjective lies with objective truth.
I am no prophet, but I do know—as mentioned in the last blog post—that the world and its thinking will continue to conspire against God. Yet if men of the world do not act as we would have them, they will act as God would have them, meaning they are not working outside of God’s plan but are being permitted to do such things because of God’s providential plan. Understandably, observing reality may persuade you to think the world has gone mad. Yes, reading the news or learning about current events may grieve your soul. Yes, the words and actions of those in power may incite you to rage. But we are commanded not to fret over the actions of evildoers (Psalm 37:1-11), for nothing falls outside of the providence of the Lord. As a result, those who trust in Him are secure; those who do not stand on shifting sands.
God’s providence is the greater wheel that turns all the lesser wheels of our reality. As Thomas Watson once wrote in Body of Divinity:
“The providence of God is “the queen and governess of the world.” It is the eye which sees, and the hand which turns all the wheels in the universe. God is not like an artificer who builds a house, and then leaves it—but like a pilot, he steers the ship of the whole creation.”
And so, no matter how things may seem now, God will bring His glory out at last. Consider for a moment: do you really think you could order the world better with providence in your hands? What about someone else? Without perfect holiness, with no eternality, no omniscience and no omnipotence, could you do better? No! What would happen is that you would choose that which is harmful to you and your neighbor.
Whatever God has in store for His reality—whether that reality be more authoritarianism under the guide of public health, climate change or the digitization of life—what I am fully persuaded of is God’s ability to bring good out of evil. Even though we may want an alternative, in the end, the alternative will not serve our best good. I think back to King David and how he prayed and pleaded with God; he earnestly desired the life of his child (with Bathsheba), who was the fruit of his sin. But had that child lived, he or she would have been a perpetual monument to David’s sin. The point is that God’s providence may sometimes be a secret, but it is always wise. Consequently, deficiency can starve our sins, and hardships prepare us for a kingdom not of this world. Beloved, God often works by contraries: He raises the church by bringing it low. He allows the beasts of Revelation to arise before the return of His Son. In fact, church history has taught us that the blood of martyrs has watered the rich soils in which the Church flourishes:
But the more [the Egyptians] afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out, so that they were in dread of the sons of Israel. (Exodus 1:12)
God’s providence also breeds patience cognizant that providence is timely. Truly, we often don’t know how to make sense of providence now, and sometimes we find ourselves ready to criticize that which we do not understand. Instead, we should long for the time when the great mystery of God’s providence will be revealed. We see some dark pieces of His providence now, but in eternity future, we shall see the whole in the light. We cannot judge the work by its pieces.
There are some who may think I am being overly pessimistic in my thinking biblically about the present and what may lie ahead. That may be so, but pessimism is only unnecessary if not grounded in truth. Is it better to expect the worst and prepare for it or to expect the best and carry along without a care? Regardless, whatever may come to be in the world, the great hope for those who are already in Christ is that you may draw closer to the King. And in a world ignorant of God, you will now be the one equipped to speak the truth in love and to speak the truth to power so that those who are called will be released from their mental fortresses. Additionally, another great hope is for those who are right now outside of Christ: for some, they will begin to see and experience the emptiness of the lie. All human beings are made in God’s image, and we were also made to worship Him (Isaiah 43:7). If a person created to worship God lives a life saturated in godlessness, sooner or later real life will preach to them: something is wrong, and something is missing. That eternity-sized hole can only be filled by Christ. This may in fact be one part of the explanation for the great saving that will happen before Christ’s return. This is a great hope for God’s kingdom.
I will close with Psalm 37:1-11:
Do not get upset because of evildoers, do not be envious of wrongdoers. For they will wither quickly like the grass, and decay like the green plants. Trust in the Lord and do good; live in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it. He will bring out your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday.
Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him; do not get upset because of one who is successful in his way, because of the person who carries out wicked schemes. Cease from anger and abandon wrath; do not get upset; it leads only to evildoing. For evildoers will be eliminated, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land. Yet a little while and the wicked person will be no more; and you will look carefully for his place and he will not be there. But the humble will inherit the land and will delight themselves in abundant prosperity.
Dr. C. H. E. Sadaphal