PART IV
Christians in the United States are well aware of the fact that Europeans are no friends of theirs on any kind of ideological level, and that the worldviews of America and Europe are TOTALLY at variance with one another. That difference stems from the fact that the "values" the Europeans subscribe to flow out of a SECULAR-HUMANIST (i.e., "POST-Christian") mindset, while those values that the Americans subscribe to ostensibly flow out of a RELIGIOUS (i.e., "Christian") mindset. And one should make no mistake about it, CHRISTIANS IN THIS COUNTRY ARE FULLY COGNIZANT OF THIS DIFFERENCE. Indeed, Lieven quotes a leading Republican politician he overheard at the dinner party he attended in New York (see above) who asked:
"Who says we share common values with the Europeans? THEY DON'T EVEN GO TO CHURCH."
The very real fact of the matter is, Christianity is a spent force culturally in Europe, while in America there is a "religious re-awakening" taking place - a re-awakening that Howard Fineman of Newsweek Magazine has likened to a new "Great Awakening"
THE SECOND "GREAT AWAKENING"
This second "Great Awakening" is based on what Dr. Gregory A. Boyd (Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary) calls "WARFARE THEOLOGY" - a "theology" that C. Peter Wagner says,
"Raises the current discussion of spiritual warfare to a new and unanticipated level of scholarly investigation ... (and) advances God's kingdom today." [Please see our article on C. Peter Wagner, "Today's Church: Making Zombies out of Christians - the Prophets and Apostles Movement."]
"WARFARE THEOLOGY" conceives of a "universal struggle" between "good" and "evil" that is taking place both in the physical and spiritual realms; and while this struggle is "universal" in nature, it is centered here on earth where, according to the adherents of this theology, the "physical" and "spiritual" realms of God's creation intersect. It is here on earth where this struggle - for better or for worse - must be fought out and won. The instrumentality through which God has chosen to fight this war is man. Boyd writes:
"We (humans) were made in the image of God precisely because we are created for the purpose of reigning with God over the earth ... Man's appointed vocation ... consists in the winning back of the earth for God ... Man's calling is to destroy the works of the devil and to renew the earth, thus transforming it into an abode of light and life ..."
Boyd continues,
"... ALL who name the name of the Lord are called to identify and resist ... the ... forces of evil that work to thwart God's plan for the earth ... and (that) besiege our own culture ..."
Commenting on this belief system, French political commentator Jean-Marie Colombani of Le Monde writes:
"These beliefs hold that America ALONE incarnates Good. If Good is beneficial to the United States, it is also beneficial to the rest of the world, and the American project of rearranging the ... (world) is better than the perpetuation of the 'chaos' that ... (now characterizes it).
GOD'S REDEEMER NATION
Needless to say, this kind of theology lends itself easily to a belief system that unites in itself patriotism and religion (specifically, Christianity) - a notion that America is God's REDEEMER NATION battling the forces of "evil" throughout the world in order to "win back the earth" and "transform it into an abode of light and life ..." After all, isn't this what George Bush is trying to do? Parry writes:
"Bush ... sees his mission in MESSIANIC terms, believing that he is the instrument of God as he strikes at Saddam Hussein and other U.S. adversaries. In a profile of Bush at war, USA Today cited Commerce Secretary Don Evans, one of Bush's closest friends (and one of the men most responsible for introducing Bush to his "Promise-Keepers"-kind of Christianity), describing Bush's belief THAT HE WAS CALLED ON BY GOD TO DO WHAT HE'S DOING."
THERE'S NO ROOM FOR EUROPE IN
THIS KIND OF BELIEF SYSTEM
There is no room for Europe in this kind of belief system. Europe inhabits a different world altogether; a "POST-CHRISTIAN WORLD" where there is nothing that is totally "black" and nothing that is totally "white;" and where "good" and "evil" are relative terms subject to discussion. Javier Solana, the European Union's High Representative for a Common Foreign and Security Policy, explains:
"The moral certainty of a comparatively religious United States is difficult to replicate in a largely secularized Europe. A religious society explains evil in terms of moral choice and free will; a secular society looks for the causes of evil in psychological or political factors. This moral certainty is reflected in a political language whose starkness and unyielding clear moral distinctions has sometimes shocked Europeans, for whom compromise and differentiation are the norm. Even some religious leaders in Europe have been uncomfortable with the ethical abruptness of some U.S. analyses. 'Bombast about evil individuals', wrote Rowan Williams, archbishop-elect of Canterbury, 'doesn't help in understanding anything. Even vile and murderous actions tend to come from somewhere'."
NO PLACE FOR EUROPE IN A WORLD
DOMINATED BY A CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW
All of this, of course, "gives the game away" insofar as Europe is concerned "at the end of the age." Why? - because there's no room in Europe's "POST-CHRISTIAN" worldview - as defined by Solana - for those who possess a Christian viewpoint. The fact is, struggle as he might, even the Pope was unable to get the European Parliament to acknowledge the "reality of God" in any of their "foundational documents." That alone precludes any consideration of Europe as playing anything but a "secondary role" at the "end of the age." Concerning the relationship of Apostate Christianity (i.e., the "Harlot") with the state (i.e., the "Beast") at the "end of the age," F.C. Jennings writes:
"Turning ... to the seventeenth chapter of the Book of Revelation, we see the whole stage filled with two personalities only: a "Beast" and a "Woman" … these two … picture … the future prophetic earth … there can be no argument or discussion as to this speaking of both the CIVIL [political, economic, and military] and ECCLESIASTICAL [religious] conditions that will rule and characterize that part of the earth that is within the limits or boundaries of Prophecy. The whole of it will be filled with what shall answer to this "Beast" and this "Woman." The two [the "Beast (which answers to the Civil Power) and the "Woman" (which answers to the Religious Power) are thus indissolubly co-related, and tell us to what end all [this is] trending; and that is that there will eventually be a one World-Empire and a one World-Church, and these will cover the whole of what is now called CHRISTENDOM; the one Empire supporting the one Church, [as] the "Beast" in the picture supports the "Woman," and the "Woman" is supported by the "Beast" …
Come on now! - Europe isn't about to produce what the Bible is depicting here! - an apostate form of Christianity riding the beast (i.e., the state). There's only one place on earth capable of producing what the Bible is describing in the seventeenth chapter of Revelation: the United States of America. Be honest! - where is there any room in the European worldview (at least the one that that Solona describes) for a relationship with Christianity? - even an apostate form of Christianity? There is none!
And if that's the case, Europe is precluded from ANY consideration as the BEAST that Jennings describes above - a nation that the Bible says is "... DREADFUL and TERRIBLE, and STRONG EXCEEDINGLY with great iron teeth: that DEVOURS and BRAKES IN PIECES, and stamps the residue (i.e., those who remain) with its feet ..." (Daniel 7:7), and one that Isaiah describes as an "OVERFLOWING SCOURGE" (Is. 28:18) - a "BEAST-NATION" (Dan. 7:7) that will gain mastery over the entire earth and establish a ONE-WORLD EMPIRE that will bring ruin and poverty to the peoples and nations of the world. [For a detailed Scriptural identification of this great "Latter Day" nation, please see our article, "In Search of Babylon" What Does the Bible Say?]
The fact is, the kind of "wishy-washy," "mealy-mouthed" uncertainty that Solana and his ilk promote in their worldview - the kind where "moral certainty" cannot be achieved, and where "evil cannot be fixed and destroyed" doesn't serve the purposes of an "empire on the make." It didn't suit Europe when they were prowling all over the earth seeking nations they could brutalize and then absorb into their colonial empires, and it doesn't suit the U.S. now as it seeks to consolidate its American New World Order System.
Nations that embrace moral relativism are nations that are unable to effectively make war; Christians in this country who see in the rise of the European Union the "Babylon of the Latter Years" are only kidding themselves about Europe's ability to displace the United States as the reigning super power at the "end of the age." Not only do the Europeans linger HOPELESSLY behind the United States militarily, but they simply no longer possess the psychological wherewithal to embrace empire-building from a military standpoint. At best, they (and the multinational corporations they have spawned) can only follow the U.S. into the Third World and hope against hope that if "push comes to shove," and they need military help to protect their "Third World" investments, the American army will be there to assist, or at least provide transportation for their own minuscule (and inept) militaries into Africa or wherever.
ONE NEEDS MORAL CERTAINTY WHEN
HE KILLS UNLESS ONE IS A SOCIOPATH
When one kills, when one drops bombs on a nation where over fifty percent of its population is under the age of fifteen, when one runs death squads in Third World countries, when one works people to death for pennies a day in "slave-wage" factories making clothes for Ann Taylor and Nike shoes, etc. (all activities necessary to "empire-building" or reasons for "empire-building"), one must possess a moral certainty beyond the moral relativism that the "Secular-Humanism" of Europe is capable of conferring on a person, unless one is an out and out sociopath. Empire-building (and the kind of killing and brutalizing that goes along with it) is a messy thing, and when one embarks on this kind of thing, one must possess the kind of moral certainty that will get one through all the untidiness. Even the SS who ran the death camps at Auschwits-Birkenau and elsewhere knew that - and that's why they adopted as their motto "Gott mit uns," which means, "God with us," or "God is on our side."
Religion is what gives the soldier, the jailer, the slave-master, the death squad functionary, etc. the psychological wherewithal to carry on in his messy, untidy, and often bloody work, a fact that led Pascal to remark,
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction!"
No! - the uncertainty that encompasses the thinking of a Javier Solana would never do in any kind of "empire-building project" - at least the kind of empire-building that employs the use of military force. Today's Europe is totally unsuitable for that sort of thing - AND FOR THAT REASON, EUROPE MUST ULTIMATELY "GIVE WAY" UNDER THE IMPRESS OF AMERICAN WORLD-HEGEMONY, JUST AS THE GREEKS FOLDED UNDER THE PRESSURE OF THE ROMANS 2200 YEARS AGO.
AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT EUROPE IS DOING NOW: FOLDING UNDER THE IMPRESS OF AMERICA'S BRAND OF APOSTATE RELIGION - A KIND OF CHRISTIANITY THAT SERVES THE DEVIL RATHER THAN THE POOR CARPENTER OF NAZARETH. [And that (i.e., the fact that Germany and France are folding) is certainly the impression with which one is left after reports surfaced several days ago of a frantic effort by the French foreign ministry to arrange a phone call between President Bush and President Chirac - a phone call that Bush accepted only after two full days of pleading from Chirac's deputies.] |
