Night Falls In the Western World- Part 1
As the western world decays and forsakes the founding principles which elevated it to global prominence, it will move ever more rapidly toward menacing authoritarianism. Whether Covid was orchestrated or only exploited by powerful forces working toward this end is the substance of debate, but what is unmistakable is that the shift is ongoing in real time, right before our eyes.
Definable foundations undergird western success and prosperity: liberty of conscience and religious freedom, free speech and uncensored public discourse, and the right to assemble to seek redress for public grievances. Respect for private property rights. These comprise the proven platform for national greatness and individual advancement. Where liberty of conscience and freedom of speech is respected and upheld, humanity tends to advance. Where the heavy hand of the state controls the thoughts, words, and consciences of the populace, human society suffers, retreats and stagnates.
Though unpopular to state it, this is the key difference between the success and prosperity of predominantly Protestant countries and the stagnation and poverty of predominantly Catholic countries.
Many examples might be discussed which evidence the correctness of the foregoing assertions. One could speak of the Huguenots, for example, and their severe persecution by Catholic France. Papal-influenced France murdered hundreds of thousands of Protestant Huguenots, starting with the St. Bartholomew’s massacre, which occasioned the flight of the Huguenots from France.1 France’s loss became Belgium, Holland, England and American’s gain when Huguenot merchants, artisans, inventors and chemists sought liberty in flight from their homes in France.2 Many scholars say that France has never fully recovered from the loss of its best and brightest.
Huguenot Irénée du Pont brought expertise for making gunpowder to the American revolutionaries.3 The Wright Brothers were of Huguenot descent. Warren Buffett is of Huguenot descent. George Washington was of Huguenot descent on his mother’s side. Eight US Presidents were of Huguenot descent, including Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, and Harry Truman. Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, is of Huguenot descent. Alexander Hamilton and John Jay are of Huguenot descent, as is John D. Rockefeller.4
One only has to consider the explosion of invention and innovation in America to recognize the truth of the matter. Humanity stagnated and suffered under the thumb of tyrannical popes and kings for over a thousand years. The Bible was kept from the people, chained up in monasteries and reserved as a tool for priests to use to falsely support the rule of papal powers. The middle class was virtually nonexistent. There were monarchs, lords, and ecclesiastical powers at the top of the societal hierarchy, and oppressed and exploited peasants at the bottom.
But liberty gave a home to the oppressed in America, and created a land without kings or popes. When it did, there was an explosion of human creation and advance that has not been rivalled in history. From this home of liberty came ligh tbulbs and mass-produced automobiles, telephones and airplanes, the artificial heart, the phonograph, the internet, the hearing aid and GPS. The light of the Bible, and its messages of forgiveness, salvation in Christ, and the God-given right for humanity to come to God through Christ alone and not through an intermediary and exploitive human power such as the papacy, was studied and taught by the Pilgrims and their children for generations.
American civil government placed checks and balances on the inclinations of tyrannical leaders. The separation of power between Congress, the Executive and the Judiciary served to restrict authoritarianism and increase accountability. The Declaration of Independence asserts in thunder tones that rights do not come from the state but from the Creator God. The Constitution codifies individual rights. The people have a say in the laws which rule them in America’s republican democratic form of government.
To a significant extent, these governmental principles were also incorporated in most of the western world following the rise of the United States on the global stage.
And each of these principles – liberty of conscience, freedom of speech, limitations on executive power, the basic concept of inalienable individual rights - is under severe threat. America and the western world today increasingly tend toward a slouching and ominous authoritarianism.
In the next segment of this series, we will explore the movement away from liberty and toward authoritarianism which is sweeping the west, and how ominous this development is for global freedom. When malevolent powers attempted to conquer the world and humanity through warfare in World War I and II, the western world rose to do battle with the powers of darkness.
As the western world, with its great might and many blessings, turns villain and persecutor, there is truly no earthly power with the power to stop it. This series will also examine Bible prophecy, and what is foretold to happen next.
- http://fpcurrent.com/st-bartholomews-day/
- https://nationalhuguenotsociety.org/who-were-the-huguenots/
- https://www.huguenotsocietyofamerica.org/history/huguenot-history/
- https://www.huguenotsocietyfl.org/famous-huguenots-and-their-decendan
