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In war, truth is often the first casualty. "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is
a revolutionary act." Rex quondam, rex que futurus Restitutor Orbis PREFACE Valentine, who has written extensively on the Phoenix program, says that the Bush Administration has begun to set up a "counter-terrorist" organization similar to the Phoenix program that operated in Vietnam. It will operate as an integral part of Governor Tom Ridge's "Office of Homeland Security" (OHS). If that is true, than God help us all. Valentine says that while the OHS appeared immediately after
the tragic events of 11 September, "like a rabbit pulled
from a magician's star-spangled hat," it's important to
understand that it has been at least four years in the making.
Based on studies and predictions that a catastrophic terror attack
was inevitable, the U.S. Commission on National Security in the
21st Century (co-chaired by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren
Rudman) had proposed an OHS-type entity patterned after Phoenix
in January of 2001. In response, according to Valentine, the CIA created its own counter-terror program - Phoenix. As part of this effort, the CIA began constructing a massive "gulag archipelago" of secret interrogation centers throughout South Vietnam's 44 provinces. Four regional centers were also built, and an existing National Interrogation Center (NIC) was modernized in Saigon. I visited the NIC on "intelligence matters" on many different occasions when I was in Saigon. Phoenix was run essentially by a cadre of "secret police" advised by the CIA and American military intelligence officers. Informants were recruited in every district, village, and hamlet in Vietnam. On the basis of an accusation made by a single anonymous informant, a VC suspect or sympathizer could be arrested and detained indefinitely. They were held until they confessed (often under torture); and then they were sent to Stalinist internal security tribunals (like the ones Bush is proposing) for "further disposition." This is exactly what the OHS is proposing to set up in this country, and America has a lot of experience in such matters; the CIA has been operating Phoenix-like programs throughout its system of "client states" for years now, so operating one now in the United States would be a cinch - we reap what we sow eventually. This is called "blowback." Valentine says that like the Phoenix program in Vietnam, the OHS will establish field offices in the 50 states and all of America's major cities. In order to achieve its elusive goal of "internal security," the OHS, like Phoenix, will need to extend its informants nets throughout the country. Inevitably, every town will probably be required to form an OHS Committee which will be comprised of citizens that the OHS has deemed politically suitable. The job of these committees will be to process reports by "concerned citizens" (i.e., informants) about the activities of "suspected citizens." Perhaps once a week these reports will be forwarded to the OHS Committee at the county level. The country committee will review the reports and send the most urgent ones to the state committee. At each level, the reports will be filtered through an ideological filter. What makes such a system especially dangerous is that Attorney General John Ashcroft has vowed to "arrest and detain any suspected terrorist who has violated the law," and has further promised "airtight surveillance" of them - but has yet to define what a "suspected terrorist" is. This is what happened in Vietnam too. There was never any consensus about the definition of a VC sympathizer; at best, it was tacitly understood by the ideologues, and the security forces under their control, that a person was either "for us" or "against us." Moreover, it wasn't enough to be just "for us" in a passive sense; one had to be actively "against them." So the definition of a terrorist suspect is deliberately left open, paving the way for political repression. The anti-terror legislation passed by Congress and signed by Bush allows for secret searches of the homes of people who meet the nebulous criteria of "suspected terrorist." So now, as you begin reading the following article, read it
with all this in mind - and bear in mind that the people we are
talking about in the article - the "WILLING POPULATION"
that the article references, will most likely be those people
[mainly PROMISE KEEPERS-like Christians (more about this in the
article)] who will be sitting on the OHS committees throughout
the country - people who will be passing on YOUR loyalty - so
that now you begin to understand what the Lord meant when He
said: [We urge you to read Dene McGriff's article on the PROMISE KEEPERS in conjunction with this article.] CHAPTER I
MESSIANISM IS VERY WIDESPREAD Mell thinks that it would be a great mistake to believe that such thinking is nothing more than a silly "redneck" kind of aberration that haunts only the fringe elements of American culture. He believes that the longing for such a "messiah-king" rests on a solid bedrock of Western tradition and is very widespread in the culture at large. It's a yearning that the forces of modernity can hide and gloss over, but one which they have utterly failed to stamp out. It is too deeply embedded in the Western psyche to be readily rooted out - and so much so that British writers Norris J. Lacy and Geoffrey Ashe can say that the longing for such a "messiah-king" has been "... a persistently imagined and hoped for political goal of countless numbers of people down through the centuries" - a kind of hunger for a messianic leader who, as Carolly Erickson, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, writes, "... has the ability to dwell in the circle of the miraculous." Indeed, IT IS PRECISELY THIS KIND OF "MESSIAH-KING" (and the concomitant idealized figure of "manhood" that inevitably accompanies such a concept - the kind out from which such ancient mythical heroes as Lancelot, Tristan, Parsifal, and Roland were fashioned) THAT MODERN-DAY CHRISTIAN GROUPS SUCH AS THE "PROMISE KEEPERS" HAVE MADE SUCH A PHANTASM OUT OF. This kind of thinking - the kind that Max Mell, Norris Lacy, Geoffrey Ashe and Carolly Erickson describe, the kind that generates "messiah-kings" - seems to present itself on a regular (if not cyclical) basis in the history of Western Civilization, producing in its wake the Barbarossas, the Napoleons, and the Hitlers of Western Christendom. It's a phenomenon that inevitably bubbles to the surface in times of great peril when it seems that only "decisive" leadership can carry the day - and it is helped along when it is has been preceded by a time of cultural dissonance, demoralization, and disappointment; for example, the cultural and economic turmoil and confusion that accompanied the socialist governments of the Weimar Republic that antedated Hitler's rise to power in Germany, and the so-called "Reign of Terror" that preceded Napoleon's seizure of power in France in the last decade of the Eighteenth Century. "READY-MADE TERRAIN" FOR Well-known academician Ian Kershaw says that - at least in the modern world - there are three elements necessary for the emergence of a new messiah-king: (1) the existence of an actual person around which a "messiah myth" can be built; (2) a propaganda machine or "PR" mechanism capable of generating the "mythos" which must accompany any new messiah-king; and most importantly, (3) a willing population ready to accept the new messiah. In this connection, one must bear in mind that, according to Kershaw, messianic leadership is as much the product of the people over which it takes hold as it is of the internal charisma of the man who ultimately comes to hold messianic power; that there must exist a symbiosis between the two (i.e., between leader and follower) so that - in the end - the one cannot exist without the other. And perhaps even more than that - THAT IT IS THE PEOPLE (i.e., the "messiah-king's" followers) THAT PRODUCE THE HITLERS OF THIS WORLD RATHER THAN THE OTHER WAY AROUND; that ultimately, people get what they deserve (and want) insofar as the Adolf Hitlers of this earth are concerned; that the people are far more responsible for producing the Hitlers of this world, than the Hitlers are of producing themselves. Finally, Kershaw says that there must also exist on a general basis a kind of "READY-MADE TERRAIN of pre-existing beliefs, prejudices, and phobias" which, when taken together, can provide the societal foundation necessary for the emergence of the new "messiah-king." [Please see Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth; Kershaw is a professor of history at the University of Nottingham in England; please also see J.P. Stern (Hitler, the Fuhrer and the People) and R. Semmler (Goebbels: The Man Next To Hitler).] WE ARE A SOCIETY MUCH MORE PREDISPOSED ACCORDINGLY, WE WILL SHOW THAT THERE IS (JUST AS KERSHAW PREDICTED THERE WOULD BE) A PATHOLOGY ALREADY AFOOT THAT IS LEADING INEXORABLY TO THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW HITLER-FIGURE, ONLY THIS TIME IT WILL BE A HITLER NOT JUST WITH A EUROPEAN REACH, BUT ONE WITH A WORLD-WIDE REACH, AND THERE WILL BE NO ONE ABLE TO STOP HIM. [And please take note of the fact that in demonstrating all this, there will be no need for us to resort to "hidden knowledge" or "secret information" available only to us and to no one else. The material we will use to demonstrate this point is freely available in the public sphere. Believe me, brothers and sisters, we are a lot further down the road to the "end of the age" than most of us care to admit; and if we don't see it, it's because we choose not to see it.] FINALLY, AND MOST SHOCKINGLY, WE WILL EXPOSE THE CONNECTION OF THE PROMISE KEEPERS MEN'S MOVEMENT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THIS COMING "MESSIAH-KING" - A CONNECTION THAT WE DID NOT MAKE, BUT ONE WHICH A WELL-KNOWN SECULAR AUTHOR, GAIL SHEEHY, MADE. It seems that, once again - "... the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." (Luke 16:8) CHAPTER II
ANTI-DEMOCRATIC FORCES IN OUR SOCIETY One thing is for sure, this "terrain" would of necessity have to lend itself in a very fundamental way to the nourishment of (or "absolutist") belief systems if only because the Antichrist will not be a person very much given to the habits of democracy - and, if that's the case, those who will form his core constituency will likewise not be particularly enamored or given to these habits either. Where, then, in our society is absolutism (i.e., political or religious systems that are ANTI-DEMOCRATIC in nature) still practiced? Where does it still hold sway? Some people, of course, would say, "NOWHERE! We are a democracy, and the institutions that prevail in our country are democratic institutions." But, sadly, that's not really so anymore. The truth is, there's not much democracy left in this country beyond the surface symbolism that still exists, a fact that induced Michael Parenti to comment that one - "... might better think of ours as a dual political system. First, there is the symbolic political system centered around electoral and representative activities including party conflicts, voter turnout, political personalities, public pronouncements, official role-playing and certain ambiguous presentations of some of the public issues which bestir presidents, governors, mayors and their respective legislatures. Then there is the substantive political system, involving multi-billion dollar contracts, tax write-offs, protections, rebates, grants, loss compensations, subsidies, leases, giveaways and the whole vast process of budgeting, legislating, advising, regulating, protecting and servicing major producer interests - now bending or ignoring the law on behalf of the powerful, now applying it with full punitive vigor against heretics and 'troublemakers'. The symbolic system is highly visible, taught in schools, discussed by academicians, gossiped about by newsmen. The substantive system is seldom heard of or accounted for." Still, as Parenti acknowledges, there remains - at least on a POLITICAL level - the requirement of rendering a certain amount of "lip service" to the concepts of democracy, and it would be very difficult indeed for anyone to ignore this necessity - i.e., the imperative for political figures to make an open show of devotion to these concepts - without being immediately "run over" by the masses. BUT THERE ARE OTHER AREAS IN OUR CULTURE WHERE SUCH AN OPEN SHOW OF ARDOR IS NOT NECESSARY; INDEED, PLACES WHERE SUCH A PRETENSE OF DEVOTION TO THE CONCEPTS OF DEMOCRACY WOULD BE ENTIRELY OUT OF PLACE AND EVEN INAPPROPRIATE. TWO PARTICULAR AREAS SPRING IMMEDIATELY TO MIND: (1) BUSINESS AND (2) RELIGION. Both of these areas (i.e., the world of religion, and the world of commerce) are extremely important because - as we will soon discover - it is out of the business world that we will find the "PR" or propaganda mechanisms necessary to the sustenance of the kind of mythos necessary to a messiah-cult, and it is out of the world of religion that we will discover a population "willing" to embrace the coming messiah-like figure - i.e., the Antichrist. And if that's the case, then we have discovered two of the three elements Kershaw, Stern, and Semmler say are necessary for the emergence of a new Hitler: (1) the propaganda mechanism, and (2) the "willing population." BUSINESS CONTROL OF THE MEDIA; AND, At that time it probably could NOT be said that the business community controlled the press (or the media) - and for that reason, the media acted as a genuine bulwark against the emergence of a Hitler-like figure. While the business community certainly controlled more than its fair share of the media at that time, there still was a robust labor and anti-corporate press in the country. Not any more; not after the Vietnam War - when the elites lost control of the country (and the war) because they did not totally control the press. After the Vietnam debacle, the elites set about buying up the press (there is, after all, a reason why Westinghouse, General Electric and other similar corporations (that normally would have NO business interest in acquiring a radio and TV network) spent millions and millions of dollars buying up CBS, NBC, ABC etc. The elite business community wanted total control of the press - and today they have it. That's why there is no longer any REAL discussion of economic matters in this country, why there is no REAL discussion of the merits of free trade, the FTAA, NAFTA, the WTO, etc. It's not allowed! There can be plenty of discussion on social issues - abortion, feminization, race issues, etc. - but there can be no real discussion on the matters that make the elites "roll and go" - like the issues we just enumerated. That's off limits now! Today the press belongs "lock, stock, and barrel" to the elite business community - AND THIS COMMUNITY IS A VERY ANTI-DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITY INDEED, AND IT IS, THEREFORE, WITHOUT A DOUBT A COMMUNITY THAT WOULD SUPPORT A "MASS MOVEMENT" (IF ONE COULD BE FOUND) THAT WOULD BE READY-MADE TERRAIN FOR THE EMERGENCE OF AN ANTI-CHRIST-FIGURE. The very anti-democratic nature of the business community lends itself to such an outcome. ABSOLUTISM IN THE BUSINESS WORLD The truth is, those who stand at the head of today's corporations are every bit as much autocrats as Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun ever were, and so much so that the men and women who have come to occupy the lofty heights of today's corporate world look down on the rest of humanity (and most especially upon their workers) with about as much contempt as Louis XIV evinced when he gazed down on the inhabitants of Seventeenth Century Paris. Moreover, by their business decrees and executive fiats they affect the lives of their "subjects" (i.e., workers) in ways that are just as profound as those of the absolute monarchs of a thousand or five hundred years ago. None of these businessmen and CEOs are given much to democratic modes of living; they are in fact despots in the most severe and brutal meaning of the word - megalomaniacs like Steve Case of AOL/Time Warner, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Sumner Redstone of Viacom, Michael Eisner of Disney, Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation, Lawrence Ellison of Oracle, John Chambers of Cisco Systems, C. Michael Armstrong of AT&T, Tom Feston of MTV, ad nauseum - egotistical, conceited, presumptuous little tyrants - all of them - and to say otherwise is to expose oneself as an ignoramus! Professor C. Wright Mills of Columbia University writes of such people: "These men transcend ... the ordinary environments of ordinary people, and by their decisions they set up and break down the destinies of others ... They are not 'confined' by their 'responsibilities' as are 'ordinary' people. They are not bound by their communities. They need not merely 'meet the demands of the day and hour'; in some part, they create these demands, and cause others to meet them. Whether or not they profess their power, they wield it in a manner which far transcends that of the underlying population. What Jacob Burckhardt said of great men, could be said of them: 'they are all that ordinary people are not'." So what do we have here? - a press that is totally controlled by these kinds of people, people who are absolutely and totally anti-democratic in nature, and who are - therefore - given to using the press (i.e., the media) as a propaganda mechanism. And it is the very anti-democratic nature of these people that predisposes the press towards the emergence of a new Hitler. Indeed, the American press today is less free of forces given to anti-democratic proclivities than was the press of Germany in 1933 - and that's quite a statement! So much for the first element necessary for the creation of an Antichrist-figure in the United States. What about the other two elements: (1) a willing population, and (2) the existence of an actual person around which a "messiah myth" can be built? Let's take first the matter of whether or not there exists a "willing population" in the country that is predisposed to the emergence of an Antichrist - and we will find that there does indeed exist such a population, and - as we just indicated - it exists, surprisingly enough (at least insofar as many evangelicals would be concerned), in the world of religion. ABSOLUTISM IN THE RELIGIOUS WORLD IT IS PRECISELY HERE, IN THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY, THAT WE FIND THE "WILLING POPULATION" THAT IS PREDISPOSED TO THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW HITLER-FIGURE. What's ironic about all this, is that this is the very community that should be predisposed AGAINST the emergence of the Antichrist. It gives you an idea of how APOSTATE evangelical Christianity has become. The very real fact of the matter is, there exists today within the evangelical community a predisposition of mind towards EXTREMELY anti-democratic modes of thinking - modes which, like those in the business community, make the religious community such READY-MADE TERRAIN for the emergence of a new messiah - which cannot help but nourish autocratic proclivities and biases. Indeed, the truth is, the pastoral system that now predominates in the evangelical world is as despotic as is the one that is found in today's business world, and so much so that those who stand at the head of most of today's evangelical churches are as tyrannical and autocratic as their corporate counterparts - maybe even more so; i.e., evangelical leaders like Charles Stanley, D. James Kennedy, Tim LaHaye, the late John Wimber, Juan Carlos Ortiz, C. Peter Wagner, Beverley LaHaye, Ern Baxter, Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Chuck Colson, Jack Hayford, David Yonggi Cho, Robert Stearns, Mike Bickle, Reuven Doron, Che Ahn, Frank Hammond, Cindy Jacobs, Bill Hamon, John Eckhardt, Bobbie Byerly, Dutch Sheets, Jim Goll, John Paul Jackson, James Ryle, Frank Damazio, Ed Silvoso, Carlos Annacondia, Claudio Freidzon, Roger Mitchell, Ted Haggart, Paul Cain, Chuck Pierce, Rick Joyner, Kingsley Fletcher, Jim Laffoon, Barbara Wentroble, ad infinitum. The list is endless and runs the entire gamut of evangelical Christianity. These men (and some women) - ALL OF THEM - exercise as much autocratic power as any CEO in today's corporate world - and perhaps even more so because they make the claim that their power derives from the divine - a claim that only a very few in the business world would dare to make (though I suppose there are a few who would probably do so). CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP HAS BECOME For example, the late R.J. Rushdoony and his estranged kinsman, Gary North, both consider democracy to be a "heresy." Rushdoony called democracy "the great love of the FAILURES and COWARDS of life." He insisted that true "... Christianity is completely and radically ANTI-DEMOCRATIC." David Chilton believes pretty much the same thing. And one is making a great mistake in believing that the thinking of Rushdoony, North, and Chilton is that much removed from the thinking of most of the other leaders in today's Christendom. Rushdoony appeared numerous times on Pat Robertson's 700 Club. North has also appeared on the same program, and both made repeated appearances at D. James Kennedy's massive church in Florida and other similarly disposed churches throughout the country. There are, of course, some evangelical Christians who might deny that the thinking of people like Rushdoony, North, Chilton, etc. is representative of most in today's Christianity - to which I would simply say, "Where have you been for the past several years?" The truth is, anti-democratic sensibilities are a common fact of life in most of today's churches, and these sensibilities are easily discerned in the way that most of these churches are organized: As corporate hierarchies that promote a military-like discipline that is enforced by an extremely rigid chain-of-command where one is required to "submit" to those who are "above," and to "rule over" those who are "below." THE CHURCH AS READY-MADE TERRAIN SADLY, BY EMBRACING THIS SYSTEM OF AUTHORITY, MOST CHRISTIANS ARE UTTERLY UNAWARE OF HOW CLOSE THEY ARE TO EMBRACING THE ANTICHRIST. That Christians could accept the kind of thinking that promotes this type of blind submission to authority only underlines how brainwashed and propagandized evangelical Christians are today with regard to the question of authority! CHAPTER III
IT SHALL NOT BE SO AMONG YOU "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion
over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. Indeed, instead of teaching that Christians should be dependent on an outward chain-of-command, Jesus said, "... ye need not that any man teach you: but ... the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie [i.e., the same anointing (which is truth and no lie) teaches all of you the same things]. (I John 2:27) And exactly what is this anointing? Jesus said that it is - "... the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." (John 14:26) And again, Jesus said, "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me ..." (John 15:26) GOD WANTS TO RULE IN OUR HEARTS JESUS DWELLS IN OUR HEARTS in the Person of the Holy Spirit! - IN ALL OF OUR HEARTS, and this is what makes Christianity so different from all the other religions of the world! This is what makes Christianity so REVOLUTIONARY! So WONDERFUL! This is why Peter can speak of the "priesthood of ALL believers" (I Peter 2:9). Sadly, however, the great truth of the "priesthood of ALL believers" which evangelicalism did so much to recover in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries is today more "dead doctrine" than it is reality - a teaching "more honored in the breach than in the keeping." Instead, most Christians in today's church have been taught to just sit quietly in their chairs (pews) week after week while the "paid professionals" teach and otherwise function. What a shame that people who today call themselves "evangelical" can put up with such a system, let alone encourage and teach it. But the people love their "kings." Why? - because they want to shirk their responsibilities before God. In other words, instead of picking up these responsibilities for themselves, they prefer to hand them over to someone else who will do the work for them (whether that means taking responsibility for their children's spiritual upbringing, studying the Word for themselves, counseling one another, etc.) - even if it means accepting a tyranny over themselves as a result. Isn't that the great lesson of 1 Samuel 8:4-22? Isn't that what the people wanted when they demanded of Samuel a king - EVEN AFTER SAMUEL HAD "REHEARSED" IN FRONT OF THEM THE KIND OF TYRANNY THAT WOULD RESULT? The fact is, in the end (at least in this world), "kings" become tyrants - whether they exercise temporal power or religious power. It is as inevitable as the sun rising in the east; that is exactly why God told Samuel to "... show them the manner of ... king(s) that shall reign over them." He knew the heart of man; He knew what eventually would happen. CHRISTIANS PREFER AUTOCRATIC LEADERSHIP Again I say, stop and think for a moment how ironic all this is! The very people through whom the concept of the Antichrist was made known to the world (and against whom they have warned the world for more than two millennia) turn out to be the very people who, in the end, will present him to the world. Now that's DECEPTION! That's real and total DECEPTION! - so that the prophecy is fulfilled in them which says that in that day - "... the very elect should be deceived" (Matt. 24:24). http://www.antipasministries.com/html/file0000087.htm http://www.cephas-library.com/mystery_gb_the_pk_and_principles_of_messianic_leadership_2.html |