Enemy at the Gate: The Playbook of the Powers and Principalities
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once remarked, “There is an irreconcilable difference between good and evil.” This has become a very unpopular perspective. We are conditioned to believe that anything is reconcilable and that both Good and Evil are user-defined and therefore open to interpretation. We are supposed to remain skeptical that Evil even exists and that Good is even possible, apart from the indulgence of our whims and appetites, which is always seen as Good and beyond reproach. After all, as highly-developed animals, we are entitled to the spoils of the evolutionary struggle, no??
Solzhenitsyn’s assessment has been turned upside down and worked over like a side of beef which lives in Rocky’s neighborhood. The postmodern ethos has informed us that distinctions between Good and Evil are meaningless; mere holdovers from the age of dead-white-guy paternalistic imperialism. We are supposed to believe that Evil doesn’t exist and never did, that anything can be good but nothing is Good. It is a brilliant strategy, conceived by a brilliant being, to wage war against the God of the Bible and His word.
As Baudelaire wrote, “The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist.” If Satan could convince the world that his existence was a myth, then it would be a simple thing to next suggest that God and His morality is similarly mythical; a surprisingly self-effacing ploy for a being whose hubris is central to the story of his existence.
As effective as this tactic has proven to be, it will never convince everyone. There are still pockets of fuddy-duddyism all over the world. Places where absolute morality still holds sway and relativism is dismissed as illogical and untenable, so new methods are needed. It is becoming clear that the strategy being used by the “powers and principalities” in our day is two-fold. The first prong of the attack is to flood the foundational institutions of Western civilization in the hopes of diluting the power and protection these institutions offer. So the institution of marriage isn’t forbidden, it is flooded to include anyone and anything which wants to call itself “marriage”. In doing so, the pungency of the institution and its preservative power in our society is diminished and obscured.
Thus it has gone with the Family, too. By encouraging all shapes and sizes of family, instead of the biblical model of familial stability through a monogamous, marital relationship, we see shows like The New Normal, Modern Family, and Family Guy resonating with audiences who view dysfunction as normal, desirable, and healthy, and familial harmony as fake, perverse, and unattainable.
With each institution given to us by God for our protection, the Enemy has made the same assault: enervation by dilution. The massive expansion and infiltration of Government into our lives has obscured the real purpose of Government as God intended it: to promote and administer justice in the place of God Himself. Nations were created in order to protect us against tyrannical rulers, giving us another civilization to flee to if the fit hits the shan. Instead of retaining this separation, we seek the input and governance from other nations over our own sovereignty via the UN and other organizations which promote a return to the time of Nimrod under a One World government.
