WHO WILL RULE THE FUTURE?

Current events in the Middle East have caused the whole world to pause and consider. In the minds of many people the question emerges: “What kind of a future can I expect to live in?”

On one hand we see scientists and prognosticators warning of future environmental and political dangers. Yet at the same time, President Bush optimistically refers to a “new world order” of international interdependence and economic cooperation.

New Age globalists, such as Ken Carey, author of the Starseed Transmissions, talk of a mystical spirituality which will bring about a planetary consciousness. We face a new millennium with both the possibility of unprecedented achievement or apocalypse.

When we look to Biblical prophets for the answers, we see both the promise of an era of peace when the nations shall “beat their swords into plowshares,” and a more frightening scenario of “wars and rumors of wars.”

Yet the Bible never teaches passivity or fatalism. Although the Personal Living God of the Universe is omniscient and knows what the future will bring, it is not a fatalistic future. God has allowed mankind to determine its future on an individual and global level. We are never to look at our lives or history fatalistically.

This is an important concept to grasp especially in times of global uncertainty. Each of us must understand that to a large extent we will determine the quality of the future we live in by the choices we make now. In order to make intelligent choices we must understand the principles that make life work and how our present worldview will determine our outcome.

In our world today there are three primary worldviews:

• First, there is the Judeo-Christian worldview which teaches that mankind was created by the Personal Living God of the Universe, that we are here for a purpose and that we are accountable for our actions before this God who was revealed to us through His eternally begotten Son Jesus Christ.

• Second, there is the New Age or Eastern mystical worldview which propagates the notion that we are all gods.

• Finally, there is the secular humanistic worldview which believes that mankind came through the random mixture of chemicals through the process of evolution. There is no purpose for man in this worldview beyond what we make of it and there is no God.

Each of us has an inner belief system which closely identifies with one of these worldviews and the actions and decisions we make stem from this inner belief system, although we may not be aware of it. The key issue is making sure that our worldview or personal philosophy is based on truth or fact. It can be either advantageous or dangerous to live life out of a worldview which is untrue.

Christopher Columbus, for example, believed that the world was round and acted upon that belief by sailing beyond a certain point. He opened up entire continents, minerals and other treasures to Europe because of a correct worldview, while others had supposed that the world was flat.

The Collapse of the Marxist Worldview

A classic example of false worldview would be the notion of Marxist communism held by many professors on college campuses. These people falsely believe – or once believed – that Marxist theory could solve mankind’s social problems. Yet in the face of the glaring evidence coming out of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism only a fool would believe that Marxism works.

For evidence against this worldview, we need only listen to the anguish of the people speaking out from under the oppression of Marxist governments like Russia, China and Cuba.

Communism falsely taught that all suffering is due to class struggle and that there is no God. This has produced the greatest tyranny the world has ever known with hundreds of millions of people being slaughtered – not to mention a billion people whose dreams and hopes have been crushed under these governments. History teaches us that ideas have consequences in the real world and wrong ideas can produce devastating results.

The Humanistic Worldview

Today in our own culture many people adhere to the by-product of Marxist communism – humanism. This worldview is equally false, being based on many of the same untruths concerning man and the material universe as communism. Humanism teaches us that there is no God; man is the center of the universe and that we are here as part of a random chemical accident.

Even on the basis of advanced mathematics and physics, the statistical probability of the human race being here by accident is so remote that large numbers of scientists have already refuted both Darwinian evolution and humanism as workable theories.

In fact, a new system of physics has already emerged which is based on the premise of there being a guiding force of intelligence to the universe. This new science even acknowledges the existence of some kind of God or higher consciousness.

Yet, as in the case of college professors still adhering to Marxism despite the glaring evidence of the real world, there are still many in the academic community who teach evolution and humanism in the face of a growing body of scientific evidence that these theories simply cannot be true.

Tragically, false ideas about life and man have powerful consequences and we are seeing the results of what humanism has done to our society over the last fifty years. Millions of young people have been indoctrinated in an educational system which has taught people that we are evolved animals and that there is no reason for life.

The result of this falsehood has produced social chaos and moral anarchy. 25 million babies have been aborted; our inner cities are being destroyed by gangs and ultra-violence; drugs and alcohol have robbed us of our moral strength; pornography creates all kinds of sexual abuse.

The destruction of our culture is a consequence of the false ideas we have embraced about life and the meaning of existence. History shows us that ideas always produce real world consequences. The false ideas of the Nazi’s “master race” produced the climate which allowed Adolph Hitler to come to power.

In our culture, humanism has taught people to live for the present moment with no moral or spiritual accountability. The direct result is moral and social chaos which can be felt at every level of our culture.

There may be some who would say that blaming all of our social ills on humanism is overly simplistic; they would charge this idea with a “witch hunt mentality” or being like a McCarthy-like “communist conspiracy” trial. Yet even the most casual observer of history would agree that a people’s belief system has everything to do with the external results of the culture.

An Alternative Worldview: Judeo-Christianity

When our culture embraced a Judeo-Christian worldview which believed that each one of us were created by God for a purpose and that there is a day of judgment for every person – when as a nation we believed in the concept of right and wrong, sexual morality, sin and the forgiveness of sins through the Savior Jesus Christ, we prospered in every area.

Our grandparents can still remember a time when you did not have to lock your doors at night in the cites and women could walk alone at night without fear. It wasn’t too long ago when men and women were married for life and perverse sexual lifestyles were scorned at.

What happened in America to produce an AIDS epidemic, child molestation, violence, drugs, a crisis in education, millions of homeless people, a plethora of cults, divorce and other social ills? Did these things just randomly spring up one day or are they the result of the way America now thinks and its collective worldview?

The root issue of all these problems is a false belief system about life. America made a wrong turn in its philosophy about life and we are now paying the results. From the moment we began to reject our Judeo-Christian worldview there has been a steady increase in the amount of our social problems. In fact, a graph plotting social problems along with the change in worldview on a chart would clearly show that our social problems are a direct result of our humanistic beliefs.

Why did we reject our Judeo-Christian heritage for the humanistic philosophies? Simply, we began to listen to the wrong voices. Russia and Germany were seduced by political activists who promised them a utopian society if they embraced Marxism or Nazism. When as a culture they allowed themselves to be debased by false worldviews and they lost their freedom and totalitarianism resulted with bloodshed and chaos.

Who will rule?

Right now our nation is at a crossroads. Social theorists and political activists propose a rejection of Judeo-Christian beliefs and promise a New Age of peace, harmony and universal spirituality. These people have crept in quietly into our educational system and have wrested control of the mass media.

They are propagating a belief that “nationalism” and patriotism” are bad; that we need to reject Christianity and Judaism which teach us that there is a Personal Living God of the Universe Who has a specific moral code which says, for example, that abortion, the occult and homosexuality are wrong.

But didn’t the Nazi’s promise a “Thousand Year Reich?” Didn’t the Marxists promise a “worker’s paradise?” On and on people have been fooled in history and have embraced false worldviews based on lies. The result time and again has been bloodshed and tyranny.

Remember – ideas have real world consequences and it is important to clearly understand your worldview and the consequences that it will produce for yourself and your culture.

The Journey Toward Truth

As someone who has personally made the journey form being a humanist who embraced New Age and Eastern mystical beliefs to finally accepting Jesus Christ into my life and recognizing that Christianity is truth and not a religion, I finally realized that truth is not the result of a popularity poll and that it is only the Judeo-Christian worldview which has stood the test of history.

I encourage you to never blindly follow the crowd when it comes to deciding for yourself what life is all about. Don’t take the opinions of your teachers, the media or anyone at face value. Do your intellectual homework and think for yourself!

To really understand life, you have to stand apart from your culture and look at your world from afar. You cannot buy into this contemporary American mindset of corrupted notions about life and history. If you have your worldview formed by MTV, Hollywood and Rolling Stone magazine then you have become the intellectual equivalent of a cream puff.

Think for yourself and dare to be different. Stand before the Living God and talk to Jesus – the Lord of the universe – the God of all history. Come face to face with your Creator and have your mind truly expanded.

Paul McGuire is the author of Who Will Rule the Future – a book about resistance to the New Age movement, and other books such as Evangelizing the New Age and Supernatural Faith in the New Age. Paul has produced and directed films with Franky Shaeffer in Hollywood, including a best selling film at the Cannes Film Festival.