September, 1997
Dear ICE Subscriber:
I continue to write about the Year 2000 Problem because I think it is the most significant threat that has ever confronted humanist civilization. The possibility of a transition to a new civilization has caught my attention. A scenario that has fascinated me ever since I read P. A. Sorokin's 1941 book, The Crisis of Our Age, I now see in the immediate future. Anyone who wants to know why I'm so focused on y2k should read that book. (Pastors should read it even if they think y2k is a brilliant but cunning publicity stunt by Bill Gates to increase the sales of Windows 98.) I have referred to the book in previous ICE letters. That's because I think it is important.
It is not simply that the Millennium Bug has placed our lives in danger. Wars do that, too. Of course, when war threatens, there are those who think it can be avoided and that other topics are more important. But when it does break out, war stories go to the front pages of every newspaper and stay there. Those who vainly predicted the war and called for military preparations replace those who pooh-poohed it, promising "peace in our time."
The eschatological issue is also present in my thinking. No, I don't mean the end times or the Rapture. I do mean the kind of transition described by Isaiah:
Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt: And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger (Isa. 13:6-13).
This apocalyptic language of final judgment did not mark the end of the world; it marked the end of Babylon's world:
Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it. Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah (Isa. 13:17-19).
We know from the prophecies in Daniel that there were four great kingdom transitions in the ancient world: Babylon to Persia, Persia to Greece (Hellenism), Greece to Rome, and Rome to Christ's kingdom (Dan. 2; 8). As far as the West goes, according to Sorokin, there have been three great transitions: Greece to Rome, Rome to medieval civilization, and medieval civilization to the Renaissance. He believed that the fourth transition is imminent.
Why? Because of ethics. Sorokin was a Russian emigré. Like Solzhenitsyn, he knew first-hand the beast of consistent humanism. He recognized that materialism is a cultural dead end. It is highly productive in terms of producing gadgets and wealth. Its technology is a powerful tool of social transformation. But its underlying faith is a lie, namely, that only that which can be touched or measured has meaning. No society can survive by means of this faith, he argued. Man is more than a material object.
At the end of a civilization, people's faith in its presuppositions begins to wane. This marks the beginning of its decline. The strengths of that civilization become its weaknesses. The beauty of its art becomes ugliness. Every sphere of culture is affected by distortions. Sorokin studied this in detail, not only in The Crisis of Our Age but in his earlier 4-volume work, Social and Cultural Dynamics. These books are nearly forgotten in modern academia, but in their day they were regarded as important contributions to our knowledge of society.
Both Sorokin and Solzhenitsyn were convinced that Western rationalism is coming to an end. The question is: What will replace it? Solzhenitsyn prefers the mystical tradition of Russian Orthodoxy. This tradition had no appeal for Sorokin. He believed that a fusion of traditions is coming: the ethical worldview of medieval civilization and the technological rationalism of the modern world. But, he predicted, the transition will be painful.
Amillennialists and premillennialists ignore this possibility. They are united on one point: today's social order will survive until Jesus comes again bodily to set up His earthly kingdom. Read Dave Hunt's Peace Prosperity and the Coming Holocaust (1983) or Hendrik van Riessen's Society of the Future (1957). The vision of the future is the same: more of the same. The same old humanism will strengthen its hand against Christians. Hunt thinks that things will get better economically and worse spiritually. Van Riessen thinks that things will get more bureaucratic and worse spiritually. I suppose this is the difference between seduction and rape. In either case, humanists will remain the power-wielding aggressors.
I disagree. Every postmillennialist disagrees. There will be a transformation of humanist culture. This God-denying civilization cannot go on indefinitely. God's kingdom will appear in history before Christ's second coming. First, premillennialism is wrong. There will be no radical eschatological discontinuity between now and the second coming, according to the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13). This denies the possibility of the premillennial Rapture. In the parable, the tares are removed from the presence of the wheat, not vice versa. Second, contrary to amillennialism, there will be a progressive extension of Christ's cultural rule in history through His people.
Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet (I Cor. 5:24-26).
What will mark the transition? The spread of the gospel, i.e., a great and continuous revival. It may be fast (my preference) or it may be steady, but it will not be rolled back. When Satan finally rebels (Rev. 20:9-10), he rebels against something: Christian civilization.
We are living in a civilization that is suffering from what Gilbert Murray called a failure of nerve (The Five Stages of Greek Religion). There is a lot of bombast today about the never-ending growth of wealth through technology and tax-deferred retirement programs, but men are at loose ends spiritually: a loss of faith. We think that all politicians are crooks, and a lot of them are. We think the courts will not consistently provide justice: a classic sign of the end of a civilization. Men are losing faith in the fundamental institutions of this civilization: state, state schools, state courts, and state everything except retirement programs. When men place their earthly faith in the confiscated wealth of their children's generation, they are at the end of the line morally. Think of the immigrant to America in 1900. His faith was in his son's future, his grandson's future. He was willing to sacrifice everything, including life in his homeland, for his heirs' opportunity. America offered greater hope for the future than any society on earth. Now immigrants come to sign up for welfare, to strip other people — younger people — of their wealth.
Can this go on forever? I say no. What do you say?
Over seventy years ago, the Marxist historian R. H. Tawney made an observation about Puritan preaching. The pastors preached against sin in general but not sin in particular. This is true of most preaching. Pastors preach against the sins of those who are not in the pews. The cultural transition comes when the sins of those in the pews have filled up the collective cup of iniquity. God brings His judgment in history, corporately, against a society that rebels against Him with impunity.
Think of the sin of chattel slavery in the Old South, which based on organized kidnapping in Africa until 1808 and on the break-up of slave families after 1808: "Selling them down the river." The laws of the Old South did not allow male and female slaves to marry. The sexes were merely for breeding. Meanwhile, the husbands and sons of southern women were committing adultery and fornication with their slaves. Any wife or mother who accepted this intellectually must have had her conscience seared — seared as badly as her husband's and son's. Yet an entire culture was built on the premise that such sundown activities were to be patiently tolerated by wives, that slave women had no legal rights, and in this area of the Old South, neither did white women. Any pastor who dared to preach against slavery in the South was removed from his pulpit. So, only northern pastors preached against slavery — sins of those in distant pews. Meanwhile, denominational courts refused to enforce the judgment of the northern preachers in the pews of southern congregations. And the war came.
What are the tolerated sins of today's Christian culture? Easy divorce and easier remarriage. Legalized abortion. Tax-subsidized bastardy. Taxation on a scale that makes Egypt under Joseph look like a tax haven. Godless schools. Godless courts. Godless entertainment. The list could go on. Why bother? Most Christians are anesthetized to such sins. They hardly recognize them as sins. I have seen Christian college professors call for greater taxation with the same self-assured confidence with which some southern preacher defended slavery in 1850 — or in the case of Robert L. Dabney, in 1867.
When I see the looming collapse of the fractional reserve banking system, which supports the modern taxation and government debt system, I see deliverance. But the price of deliverance will be high. Destroy the modern division of labor by destroying the bank payments system, and half a billion people will face poverty and maybe even death.
If the nations' electrical power grids shut down, either in one gigantic short on Jan. 1, 2000, or else by the erosion of supplies of coal, oil, and replacement parts, modern civilization will collapse. We are addicted to cheap electrical power. But when I point out that this blackout is a possibility, I am met with skepticism, ridicule, and blank stares. "This can't happen!" Why not? Because people don't want it to happen. I ask: What if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should enforce its December 24, 1996, warning to all 107 U.S. nuclear power plants that they are not y2k-compliant? What if, in order to cover themselves, NRC bureaucrats order a shutdown of all noncompliant plants in late 1999? If they do, as much as 20% of America's electrical power will go off, literally overnight. In some regions, it will be 40%. To make up for such a loss, every regional power grid will be forced to supply massive quantities of power to distant regions. Then, on Jan. 1, 2000, train deliveries of coal could stop. No railroad is y2k-compliant today. Coal still supplies about 20% of the energy at most U.S. power plants. This scenario is so obvious that it takes a willful blindness to deny the possibility of a gigantic and permanent power outage.
God has led us into a situation in which the entire urban population of the West is literally at risk of death. A total power failure may not happen, but it could happen and may happen. That the West does not acknowledge its vulnerability and repent is indicative of its judicial blindness. That pastors remain mute is even more evidence of such blindness.
Sincerely,