Rod Dreher/The Age of Antichrist Is Here

[mystery-ak]

October 26, 2021|

4:35 pm
Rod Dreher

When I was a kid in the late 1970s, I happened upon a copy of Hal Lindsey’s megaselling The Late Great Planet Earth. It was an Evangelical account of the Last Days, purporting to explain how we were living in the times just before the return of Jesus Christ. All of this hit me like a bomb. I didn’t know Jesus Christ was coming back! Why did no one tell me? (I’ve told you before that we weren’t big churchgoers in my family.) And holy cow, I had no clue that the Soviet Union was mentioned in the Bible, and that the European Common Market was going to produce this guy called the Antichrist, and that there was this thing called the Rapture … et cetera. This was thrilling stuff. It electrified my imagination for a year or two. And then it burned out, and with it went my faith for some time.

As an adult Christian, I would laugh at myself, recalling how seriously twelve-year-old me took Hal Lindsey’s speculations, none of which came true. That End Times narrative is really narcotic, though. As a Catholic, I saw a version of it, usually involving devotion to Marian apparitions. A priest friend who had been converted at Medjugorje, but who early in his priesthood wearied of apparition-chasers, told me how frustrating it was to him to be unable to get his most enthusiastic parishioners to focus on the ordinary part of being Catholics. They wanted the spiritual fireworks. It’s a real temptation.

The thing is, the Christian tradition really does say that before the Second Coming of Christ, there will arise a messianic world leader called by Scripture the “Beast,” who is the “Antichrist.” He will lead a mass persecution of the Church, and will oversee a global dictatorship that controls people’s lives so thoroughly that, according to Revelation 13:

16Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead,17so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.18This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.

more
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-age-of-antichrist-is-here/?fbclid=IwAR1XePNixt3yZF-NhDeAEWaTsRVAKbpW5HoKLtng9gQGgVKbgqaKBCyQfaI

[Kamaji]

Rod Dreher is a powerful writer.

And I learned a new term from this article:  baizuocracy

Which is most likely derived from the Chinese term Baizuo:

literally White Left)[1][2] is a Chinese neologism and political, racial epithet used to refer to Western leftist ideologies primarily espoused by white leftists.[3] The term baizuo is related to the term shèngmǔ (simplified Chinese: 圣母; traditional Chinese: 聖母; pinyin: shèngmǔ; literally "Holy Mother") or shèngmǔbiǎo (simplified Chinese: 圣母婊; traditional Chinese: 聖母婊; pinyin: shèngmǔbiǎo; literally "Holy Mother–Whore"), a sarcastic reference to those whose political opinions are perceived as being guided by emotions or a hypocritical expectation to benefit from selflessness and empathy of others.[4][5]

Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baizuo

[Kamaji]

Here's the really sad/scary thing about all of this:  the Unabomber is becoming progressively less and less insane.

[Kamaji]

Sorry to post ad nauseam, but I re-read that article, and each time I read it, it chills me even more:

The Age of Antichrist is not about Ozzy Osbourne and pale Goths. It’s about nebbishy Lin Jinyue [n.b., the inventor of the Chinese social credit system], the head of Human Resources at major companies, and Silicon Valley. And it is here. They are going to use their power to establish a reign of virtue. There will be no room for non-compliant Christians in it (or non-complying anyone else). We were warned 2,000 years ago. We are warned once again by Paul Kingsnorth, whether he knows it or not.

China is where this future is being perfected:

https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/1451621865349267457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1451621865349267457%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theamericanconservative.com%2Fdreher%2Fthe-age-of-antichrist-is-here%2F

[Free Vulcan]

Here's the really sad/scary thing about all of this:  the Unabomber is becoming progressively less and less insane.

Dude! My sister pointed him out to me a few years back.

The guy was practically a prophet. Its too bad he destroyed himself by committing violence.

[Kamaji]

Dude! My sister pointed him out to me a few years back.

The guy was practically a prophet. Its too bad he destroyed himself by committing violence.

I know.  If one reads his manifesto, it does begin to hit on many of the same themes that the authors Dreher cites to hit on.

Unabomber's main problems were (a) really bad timing - he was way to far ahead of the curve - and (b) catastrophic implementation problems (really, really, really poor choice of targets).

One wonders if the Unabomber gets much news in prison these days, particularly about social media and the degree of control the social media companies are exerting over people.

[mountaineer]

The veins and sinews of the Machine that surrounds us and pins us and provides for us and defines us now. I imagine a kind of network of shining lines in the air, glowing like a dewed spiderweb in the morning sun. I imagine the cables and the satellite links, the films and the words and the records and the opinions, the nodes and the data centres that track and record the details of my life. I imagine the mesh created by the bank transactions and the shopping trips, the passport applications and the text messages sent. I see this thing, whatever it is, being constructed, or constructing itself around me, I see it rising and tightening its grip, and I see that none of us can stop it from evolving into whatever it is becoming.

I see the Machine, humming gently to itself as it binds us with its offerings, as it dangles its promises before us and slowly, slowly, slowly reels us in.

Very Dean Koontz-like. I heartily recommend his novels. What we thought was fiction is a lot like real life.

[mountaineer]

And then this popped up on my Facebook feed:

[Kamaji]

Very Dean Koontz-like. I heartily recommend his novels. What we thought was fiction is a lot like real life.

Like in The Matrix:

[Absalom]

A strong demurral along w/the assertion that it is Nihilism, not anti-Christianity, which is undermining culture/society.
Four centuries before Jesus Christ and Roman Catholicism, the infinitely wise Ancient Greeks developed the tools of
Logic & Reason creating the Nostrum of Prudence whereby actions taken in the now must be measured against their consequences on the future. It is this which is under ferocious attack and not the religious impulse.