We’re at an inflection point in history, for real – it comes along about every six or eight generations – where things are changing so rapidly that we have to be in control. ~ President Joseph Biden

The theme of this meeting is “history at a turning point” – a theme that encompasses far more than solely this breach of the international peaceful order…. I see another global development that constitutes a watershed. We are experiencing what it means to live in a multipolar world. ~ Olaf Scholz, Federal Chancellor of Germany at the Davos Forum

The best and perhaps only way to preserve our civilization is to defeat Putin as soon as possible. That’s the bottom line. ~ George Soros at the Davos Forum

The times ahead will be radically different from those we’ve experienced in our life times, though similar to many times in history. ~ Ray Dalio, author of Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order

It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. ~ Yogi Berra, 10-time World Series champion

An earth shaking shift in the world’s regional powers is coming. How do I know? History shows this happens all the time. And coming with it is an incredible opportunity to participate in Christ’s victorious kingdom as it forcefully advances in the nations.

There are different periods in history when nations try to create global world orders. Given enough time, these empires always collapse. We are in such a collapse right now. I used to look at people who are paranoid about George Soros’ “New World Order” as being conspiracy nuts. However, I have discovered that George Soros talks frequently about the fact that he’s funded color revolutions all over the world since the break-up of the Soviet Union. He is part of a large group of investors in foreign politics that brought about the current crisis in Ukraine.

Since World War II, western Europe has been using the American military to enforce their vision of liberal democracy on the whole world. I used to think that that was a good thing because we were in competition with communism for global dominance. But the problem is their goal is worldwide socialism, which is communism’s evil twin cousin. I call it the religion of egalitarian humanism. Francis Schaeffer warned about statism in his masterful books and so did Alexander Solzhenitsyn in works such as his Harvard Commencement Speech in which he warned that the West was making the same fatal errors as Soviet communism.

The Emerging Multipolar World. See the video version for even more information.

The statement coming from Scholz at the Davos Forum is interesting. He used the word “multipolar” to describe what is coming. They fear that. And that ought to give us pause. They are openly stating that they fear a world in which one power is not in complete control of the rest of the world. It’s possible that in the near future, historians might look back on the Bush, Clinton, Obama and Biden regimes as being the most evil period in American history much like we see Stalin’s purges or Mao’s cultural revolution. Most Americans see our actions as justified, because instead of doing this to our own people, we did it to millions of Muslims. But that’s not how most of the world looks at us. They see America as the great Satan, as a military killing machine.

Further, the multipolar world is a concept that political scientists have been debating for many years. It is seen as inevitable as emerging economies take their place on the world stage. The Davos Forum seeks to hold on to a unipolar world order. Nevertheless they see a multipolar world as an inevitability.

Davos 2015 – Forum Debate: A Multipolar World? Note that in the above debate, the liberal political view is that civilization is an economic alignment — more like the Marxist idea of the political struggle between economic classes — rather than a clash of deep cultures, a clash of “civilization states.”

In the Russia-Ukraine conflict, most western analysts view Russian president Vladimir Putin as trying to rebuild a nation-state empire like the Soviet Union that is based on a political and economic philosophy. On the contrary, Putin is not trying to conquer the world for Marxist-Leninism as the Soviet dictators attempted. Russia has moved on to a market economy similar to the western model. Putin is trying to align the Russian world along their historic and ethno-linguistic boundaries in order to build a civilization-state based on the traditional values of Russian culture. Western idealogues not only misunderstand the intention, but they are hell-bent on the same type of world conquest they accuse Russia of attempting — although they justify it because in their view, western political and economic ideals are superior.

In the meantime, Russia and China issued a joint statement in January insisting that although democracy and human rights are universal human values, individual cultures define it differently. To Russia, traditional values aligned with Eastern Orthodox Christianity are of paramount importance. To paternalist China, loyalty to the ruling authorities must be maintained. To the western bloc, especially among the non-elected bodied of the UN and globalist think tanks such as the Davos Forum, a more modern accommodation to “human rights” must be promoted, including universal access to abortion, LGBTQ rights, and other aspects of “woke” culture. These conflicting values cause a clash of cultures — a clash of civilizations.

Although I was once comforted that America was the only remaining superpower in the world, I now thank God that the unipolar world has run its course. The walls are down, but the sentries are still guarding the gates. Egalitarian humanism has collapsed! It’s much like the time when the angel freed Peter from jail (Acts 16:16-40). Some disciples believed when they saw him that it must be a ghost (“his angel”) even though they’d been praying for his release.

Like Peter, we’ve been released! And our job is to get to work at rebuilding our Christian civilization.

The Failed Plan to Break Up Russia

The Russia-Ukraine crisis from the outset was sparked by American and western European meddling in Ukraine’s corrupt government and national corporations. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. It is just a reflection of a larger global war. It is an economic and political war. It is culminating right now and the West has already lost.

The goal of western globalists ever since Kiev’s Orange Revolution of 2008 has been as follows.

1. Goad Russia into a conflict with Ukraine
2. Impose economic sanctions
3. Ultimately break-up Russia into smaller countries by weakening it economically
4. Install western leaning client governments
5. Break off the control of Moscow over the resource rich Ural and Siberian regions
6. Sell off Russia’s vast natural resources to western companies

Russia wasn’t having any of that. So they began several years ago in collaboration with China, India, Iran and other allies to build parallel banking, exchange and economic systems. They sufficiently prepared for the day when a set piece battle with the West would come. Now it has arrived. Soon the western neo-liberal globalists will be consigned to the ash heap of history.

The Emerging Multipolar World: The Failed Plot to Destroy Russia. See the video version.

The wealth of the nations is tied to the industry and creativity of its people. It is not just natural resources, but our ability to take and develop those resources into useful commodities. It is the ingenuity and work ethic of Americans that make us so far the richest country in history. The wealth of the nations is in its personalities. That being said, wealth is ultimately linked to resources. And that is the foundational reason why the world is changing fast.

America and Europe are no longer alone in being countries with large middle class populations. This may be a surprise to many people, but the sole locus of the world’s powers can no longer be just America. Now we can no longer use our military might and economic hegemony to control other countries’ resources in exchange for Pax Americana. For many years, economists have insisted that for an economy to thrive it must be interconnected to the world economic system. Russia has vanquished that myth by showing a civilization can be self-sustaining by being a net exporter of food and energy resources. Large resource rich nations are now developing their own parallel systems or in alliance with neighbors who will recover their unique traditional culture and values. We are seeing the loci of several ancient civilization states emerge in the following places in the order of their wealth of natural resources.

Countries with the Most Natural Resources

1. RUSSIA (the Russian world)
2. UNITED STATES (the Anglo-Saxon world with Canada)
3. SAUDI ARABIA (the Arab World)
4. CANADA (with the United States.)
5. IRAN (the Persian world)
6. CHINA (the Chinese world)
7. BRAZIL (with Venezuela — the Latin American World)
8. AUSTRALIA (part of the Anglo-World and/or in alliance with China and India)
9. IRAQ (part of the Arab world)
10. VENEZUELA (the Latin American World)

In addition, three emerging power bases will likely result in at least three more civilization states made up of several countries.

1. India (the Hindustani world)
2. Central and South Africa (the African world)
3. Europe (Aligned with several of the above, but not the EU as we know it now)

What does this have to do with the Gospel of the Kingdom of God?

Everything!

When we look at history, we see that Christianity advances as the empires of mankind rise and fall. After World War II, the United States, along with the Soviet Union, became the two dominant nuclear superpowers – a bipolar world order. This mutually assured destruction coupled with post-war alliances of NATO, SEATO and the Warsaw pact led to some limited wars, but a greater era of peace than ever before. This also led to an era of world evangelization that we had never seen before in history – especially in sub-Saharan Africa and much of Asia. In fact, more people were converted to Christ in this period than in all of previous human history.

In 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved. This led to a unipolar world order. President George H.W. Bush used the opportunity to proclaim a “New World Order” of freedom. During this time we also saw the Gospel begin to take hold of former atheistic communist states. Christian heads of state in third world and former communist countries openly proclaimed the name of Jesus Christ as Lord over the nations. We continued to see a large harvest of souls into the kingdom of God. Further, there was huge progress made in lessening hunger, sickness, poverty, wars and crime in emerging nations. More countries than ever before emerged with democratically elected governments and fewer people died in wars and revolutions than in the previous decades of the 20th century.

Christian Reconstruction of the nations begins with regeneration. But God revives not just individuals, but families, churches and whole civilizations. Christ is already ruling over the nations. That is the natural world order. The collapse of competing systems is inevitable in the course of history. Totalitarian empires collapse in favor of regional republics. Christian civilization eventually emerges from under the rubble as these republics gravitate toward the larger spheres of culture.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is not the cause, but a side-effect of the collapse of western dominance in world politics and economics. Populists understand that the globalist world order is failing. But so do nationalist movements. And so do many classical liberals, socialists and communists. Further, Christian civilization states such as Russia, Hungary and Brazil understand it even better and have planned for this shift for a long time. Most western neo-liberals and neo-conservatives missed the first shift 30 years ago and still cling to a Cold War mentality. The same people who missed the significance of the shift away from worldwide communism are still in the dark about the coming realignment of the rest of the world away from Soviet communism’s twin cousin – western egalitarian humanism.

This tectonic event is already here. It will affect every sphere of life.

The emperor has no clothes!

Many western leaders including President Joe Biden might not even be in power this time next year. To understand how Biden senses this danger, but on the whole remains clueless, we need only look at his speech from May 3rd, 2022.

We’re at an inflection point in history, for real – it comes along about every six or eight generations – where things are changing so rapidly that we have to be in control. Folks, there’s an ongoing battle in the world between autocracy and democracy. Xi Jinping, the leader of China, who I’ve talked – I’ve spent more time with than any other world leader has – over 78 hours on the – either in person or on the telephone with him. And the fact of the matter is he just is straightforward about it. He says that democracies cannot be sustained in the 21st century. Not a joke. They cannot be sustained – because things are moving so rapidly, democracies require consensus, and it’s hard to get consensus, therefore they can’t keep up with an autocracy – one-man rule. But that’s not going to be the case. If that happens, the whole world changes (Remarks by President Biden on the Security Assistance to Ukraine, May 3rd, 2022. Emphasis added).

Biden made this comparison between the US and China as an appeal in a speech for Congress to pass a $40 billion arms bill for Ukraine. The western alliance nations are the free democracies. Russia and China are the evil autocratic nations of the world. Biden literally gave an urgent call to arms to protect western dominance over the world order. What is not stated is that western liberal democracy can also be a form of tyranny. It has led to the deaths of millions of people among civilizations who do not share our western worldview. Biden also echoed the idea that America is the “arsenal of democracy” that fights tyranny. I would argue that this is an Orwellian twist on the idea of a “battle between autocracy and democracy.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt first used this phrase in 1940 to cajole isolationists who insisted America be neutral in the beginning of World War II.

We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war.

Over thirty years ago in 1989, when I first began as an editor of The Forerunner, I would have applauded such a statement. The Berlin Wall had recently come down. I soon began to travel on missions trips to the Soviet Union (later Russia and Ukraine). In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, President George Bush announced the emergence of “The New World Order.” Soon America began its quixotic wars to fight Islamic terrorism. I supported the Kuwait War, the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War. I believed that the United States, the leader of the free world, was standing up against dictatorships who violate human rights and sponsor terrorism. I agreed with Bush that “a fresh new breeze is blowing … the day of the dictator is dead.”

This offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historical period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times a world order can emerge, a new era freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world … prosper and live in harmony. One hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace while 1,000 wars raged across the span of human endeavor.

And today that New World is struggling to be born – a world quite different from the one we’ve know, a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle; a world in which nations recognize the shared responsibilities for freedom and justice; a world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.

As a young Christian, I believed with President Bush and many Americans in the idea of America’s redemptive mission in the world. It was America’s leadership in World War I and II that secured freedom for western Europe and kept the world safe for democracy. As President Bush remarked, “There is no substitute for American leadership.” I saw that now the spectre of Soviet Communism had vanished, we were seeing many free elections in Soviet-influenced autocracies – from Latin America, to Africa and Southeast Asia. For the first time in history, new democratically elected governments were being established in the world. I believed and still believe that was a miraculous turn of history.

However, a unipolar world is only suitable when the largest concentration of Bible-believing Christians is leading that international world power. Is that still true of America? Unlike during the immediate post-WWII era, the largest concentration of Christians is no longer in the United States and Europe. Increasingly, the center of Christendom is in Africa and Asia. There have also been huge evangelical revivals in Latin America. The greatest number of evangelicals Christians in Europe by far are located in Russia. Ukraine has the largest number of evangelicals in Europe per capita. The Orthodox Church in both countries has also experienced phenomenal growth since the 1990s. A Russian Christian civilization with several satellite nations is the future of this region.

However, for such a civilization to thrive, it must grow economically and have the military capability of defending its own borders. Standing in the way of that development has been the American defense doctrines developed under the two Bush administrations

The Wolfowitz Doctrine (1992)

The Wolfowitz Doctrine is an unofficial name given to a plan proposed during the George H.W. Bush administration in 1992. It was written by Secretary of Defense for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz, and his deputy Scooter Libby. It sparked a public controversy about U.S. foreign and defense policy. The document outlined a policy of unilateralism and preemptive military strikes to suppress potential threats from other nations and prevent dictatorships from rising to superpower status. It announced that the United States was the world’s only remaining superpower following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Wolfowitz proclaimed the main objective was to retain that status. The doctrine had the following points.

1. The US is the sole superpower within the New World Order.
2. The US should act unilaterally and downplay the value of international coalitions.
3. The US has the right to intervene when and where necessary with preventive military action.
4. A resurgent Russia poses the greatest threat to the US.
5. In the Middle East, the overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve US and western access to the region’s oil.

The Bush Doctrine (2006)

While language of the Wolfowitz doctrine was toned down by the Bush administration after being prematurely leaked to the press, its meaning remained intact. These developed into the official Bush Doctrine under George W. Bush by 2006.

1. Make no distinction between terrorists and the nations that harbor them — and hold both to account.
2. Take the fight to the enemy overseas before they can attack us again here at home.
3. Confront threats before they fully materialize.
4. Advance liberty and hope as an alternative to the enemy’s ideology of repression and fear.

At the heart of the Bush Doctrine is the belief that there can be no rival power. Bush insisted that America was a beacon of freedom to the world and our enemies are “evil doers” who want to destroy America because they “hate freedom and our way of life.” In 2022, we hear similar statements from George Soros and his ilk that pit western “democracy” against “autocracy.” This generalization may be true. However, in practice it is difficult for one nation to dictate to another what a “democracy” should look like. This is especially true within civilizations based on ancient cultures that have opposing views of morality and social order.

The Bush policy was to goad surrounding territories into conflicts with Russia. Former U.S. president George W. Bush was recently seen on video telling who he believed to be Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “destroy as many Russian troops” as the country could, and even commented on the 2008 Georgian war, seemingly unaware he was actually speaking with two Russian pranksters.

The problem with the west’s New World Order doctrine is that our leaders were either blinded to a hidden truth or were intentionally hiding some stark realities from the public.

First, Bush correctly saw the importance of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, but the United States was by no means the only remaining nuclear superpower. True, the new Russian Federation inherited an economy that was reeling. Although the Soviet Union broke into 15 republics, Russia inherited the debt of the former USSR in exchange for its nuclear arsenal that was moved out of the surrounding republics into Russian Federation territory. Mutually assured destruction was still the most important stark reality.

Second, Russia still remained a potential economic powerhouse. Although overvalued, the Soviet Union was consistently rated as having the highest GDP in the world even until 1990. This was largely because the ruble itself was inflated by the Bank of Russia and deemed to be worth much more than its true value. Today the opposite is true. While the USSR disintegrated (a nation of over 300 million people) the Russian Federation (a nation of less than 150 million people) has moved steadily to a market economy. In fact, the worth of Russia’s natural resources is estimated to be over $72 trillion. This amount incorporates coal, oil, natural gas, gold, timber, rare earth metals and vast agricultural commodities. Russia is also the largest net exporter in the world and has the lowest national debt to GDP ratio of any large country. Despite numerous sanctions in the past few years, the Russian ruble became the world’s fastest growing currency against the dollar as of May 2022.

Third, even though Russia was no longer the tyrannical Soviet Union, the United States and western Europe soon resumed a Cold War mentality. Beginning with the recovery of the economy, western leaders began to fear the growth of the old Soviet power – or a new Czarist Russian Empire under Putin. In response, NATO began to inch eastward in direct contradiction to verbal and written security guarantees made to Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Although George W. Bush was warned by advisors that this could lead to a hot war in Europe, their advice was ignored. Instead he heeded the advice of Vice President Dick Cheney. In fact, former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote that Cheney pushed this strategy when he was George H.W. Bush’s defense secretary, “When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, Dick wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union … but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat.”

Fourth, when Putin first assumed power, he made overtures to the European Union that they should let Russia join. He was told by European Commission President Romano Prodi, “I told him straight away clearly: no, you are too big.” Why Europe would refuse the world’s largest net exporter of natural resources is a mystery. When Putin asked for Russia’s membership in NATO, thinking that would solve the problem of competing military alliances, he was similarly rebuffed. When Putin offered Russia’s help to George W. Bush to work together to fight Islamic terrorism, he was ignored. When Russian intelligence requested the FBI and CIA to separately help them investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s possible ties to Islamic extremism in 2011, it was not taken seriously until the “Boston Bombers” inevitably struck on Patriots Day in 2013.

Fifth, the United States began a policy of backing “color revolutions” around the world including those in Georgia and Ukraine in 2004, 2008 and 2014. When these mafia-run and neo-Nazi influenced governments began to combat separatist rebellions among ethnic minorities along Russia’s border, they were assured by the United States that they would have NATO’s backing. In each case, when Russia intervened, NATO did little or nothing.

In short, the Cold War obsession with “Russia, Russia, Russia” as being behind every foreign and domestic problem has brought us to the current world crisis.

The Multipolar World Order

The seeds of destruction were sown into the foundation of George H.W. Bush’s New World Order from its inception. Regardless of how Russia’s economy and human rights record is rated, western leaders refused to respect the political, military and economic might of the surging Russian Renaissance that has led to the collapse of western globalism. The problem with the “New World Order” doctrine over 30 years later is that Joe Biden is simply lying about the true state of affairs. Or possibly, he has no idea about what is really going on. As a man entering his 80s this year, whether senile or not, he is simply out of touch and clinging to a Cold War mentality that demonizes both Russia and China. Although these nations certainly have big problems and tenuous human rights records, the attitude of viewing superpowers as enemies to be weakened, rather than as competitors who can benefit from our example, ought to have vanished 30 years ago. Instead, our president and most western leaders cling to the idea that the New World Order must be maintained in order for liberty to remain among any nation on this planet.

On February 4th, 2022, Russia and China released a document entitled, Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development.

The document in summary makes the following points.

1. Democracy is a universal human value, rather than a privilege of a limited number of States.
2. Peace, development and cooperation lie at the core of the modern international system.
3. The fates of all nations are interconnected.
4. No State can or should ensure its own security separately from the security of the rest of the world and at the expense of the security of other States.
5. Russia and China, as world powers, intend to advance multipolarity and promote the democratization of international relations, together create an even more prospering, stable, and just world, jointly build international relations of a new type.

The document ends by proposing a “Russia-India-China” format that would create a parallel economic system that would not be dependent on the west. This is one of the vital components of a multipolar world order.

It is a stark fact of history that just as the bipolar Cold War World Order vanished on December 26th, 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the unipolar New World Order collapsed on February 24th, 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. This stifled the ability of NATO, the European Union and the western alliance to do as it pleases, to align military and economic control of the world, and to manipulate the trade of the planet’s natural resources. We have now entered into a multipolar world order, no longer led by a few nation-states based on western neo-liberal democracies who force their way of life on other nations, but led by several older civilization-states based on deep cultural identities.

This philosophy of America’s role in world affairs was exemplified by President Donald Trump in his First Inaugural Address.

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example. We will shine for everyone to follow…. At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. The Bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity. We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity. When America is united, America is totally unstoppable. There should be no fear. We are protected and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement. And most importantly, we will be protected by God.

This stands in stark contrast to President Biden’s speech when he stated “we have to be in control” – meaning we have to control Russia and China’s government, Russia and China’s economic policies, by having dominance militarily. While we cannot enter into World War III on two fronts with Russia and China, Biden advocated control of their military actions by provoking conflicts on their borders and continuing to promote our vision of liberal democracy on smaller countries and factions within their sphere. We have to impose our economic trade policy on the smaller and weaker countries throughout the Third World. These emerging nations receive economic aid as perks in exchange for keeping up with the west’s cultural experiments in expanding human “rights” and imposing the secular religion of “woke-ism.”

This policy could not be more wrong.

Putin thinks this is unfair and proposes an alliance with China and India as a multipolar world based on traditional civilization states. However, the western globalists such as George Soros see this as a threat to “our civilization,” which is not a civilization at all, but has become a collection of liberal states whose policies are dictated by an unelected elite cabal.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is a symptom of their collapse. It is speeding up the process of decoupling that region of the world from western design. The rest of the world has already moved in that direction away from western control. The negotiated end of this conflict will free them to move further.

However, Biden was right about one thing, “the world is changing fast. We are at an inflection point.” Unfortunately, for America to hold on to our leading place in the world, Biden does not see, “a city set upon a hill, a shining light for all the world to see,” as our founders envisioned. He sees instead the “arsenal of democracy.” We have become an empire that defends “democracy” throughout the world with our military industry and the export of weapons to fight foreign wars. These expenditures have amounted to trillions of dollars given to nations who will never be able to repay us. Therefore, they are forever tied to monetary interest payments and become in effect vassal states of the American empire.

This state of affairs came crashing down on February 24th, 2022. It is vital that Americans know that this tectonic shift has taken place. The former unipolar world order is already lost and irretrievable. Yes, there will be aftershocks and repercussions – a lurching back and forth of the tectonic plates of geopolitics for years to come. Military and economic wars will be fought for land and resources. We need to accept that this is inevitable. However, Christians should rejoice over it. There is a new global order coming – one based on multipolar civilization states that will greatly accelerate the advance of the Gospel in the nations.

Politics Fourth!

We should remember that when we see an over-emphasis on nationalism, that politics is fourth. First comes individual self-government, then the family, then the church, then civil politics. What is happening in world conflicts right now is significant because statism through the West’s control of the unipolar world power is collapsing — and in fact has collapsed.

This represents an unprecedented opportunity for individuals, families and churches throughout the world to take their roles in rebuilding (or first building in places like China and India) a Christian civilization.

We should try to see the big picture. The Russia-Ukraine conflict is not the cause of the shift, but one of the side effects. Whenever such big shifts in global power happen in history, tumultuous events always accompany the transformation of the world order. We should be on the side of neither liberal democracy nor autocracy — we should be on the side of Christ’s victorious kingdom that permeates all levels of human government, culture and society.