The Darkness Before the Dawn

By David Hobbs



I write these blog posts to stir discussion and thinking, especially out-of-the-box thinking, rather than to advance some pet doctrine. Therefore, my last post on the need of “think-tank Christian planners and strategists” was not necessarily advocating for that, but bemoaning the church’s passivity, complacency, and continual playing defense against the devil.

Way too many churches are sitting around waiting for the Rapture or for God to judge/destroy the world like in Noah’s day, instead of imitating Jesus, who came to “destroy the works of the devil.” Believe me, the church will fare much better going through the destruction of the works of the devil than going through the destruction of the world!

If we believe the Bible when it says “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world,” then why don’t we live like it? Why don’t we demonstrate to the watching angels, demons and holy ones that it is true while giving glory to Jesus at the same time? But what glory is it to Him watching us being systematically driven out of the culture (while living lives indistinguishable from the world)?

How bad is it? Has it ever been this bad before? Sadly enough it has. Consider this passage from church revival scholar J. Edwin Orr, as quoted in the Renewal Journal:

Not many people realize that in the wake of the American Revolution there was a moral slump. Drunkenness became epidemic. Out of a population of five million, 300,000 were confirmed drunkards: they were burying fifteen thousand of them each year. Profanity was of the most shocking kind. For the first time in the history of the American settlement, women were afraid to go out at night for fear of assault. Bank robberies were a daily occurrence.

What about the churches? The Methodists were losing more members than they were gaining. The Baptists said that they had their most wintry season. The Presbyterians in general assembly deplored the nation’s ungodliness. In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samuel Shepherd of Lennox, Massachusetts in sixteen years had not taken one young person into fellowship. The Lutherans were so languishing that they discussed uniting with Episcopalians who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, Bishop Samuel Provost, quit functioning: he had confirmed no one for so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment. The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, that the Church “was too far gone ever to be redeemed.” Voltaire averred, and [atheist] Tom Paine echoed, “Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.”

Take the liberal arts colleges at that time. A poll taken at Harvard had discovered not one believer in the whole of the student body. They took a poll at Princeton, a much more evangelical place: they discovered only two believers in the student body, and only five that did not belong to the filthy speech movement of that day. Students rioted. They held a mock communion at Williams College; and they put on anti-Christian plays at Dartmouth. They burned down the Nassau Hall at Princeton. They forced the resignation of the president of Harvard. They took a Bible out of a local Presbyterian church in New Jersey, and burned it in a public bonfire. Christians were so few on campus in the 1790s that they met in secret, like a communist cell, and kept their minutes in code so that no one would know.

In case this is thought to be the hysteria of the moment, Kenneth Scott Latourette, the great church historian, wrote: “It seemed as if Christianity were about to be ushered out of the affairs of men.” The churches had their backs to the wall, seeming as if they were about to be wiped out.

 And yet out of that dark and dismal time rose the Second Great Awakening—a series of great revivals that swept across the country up until the time of the Civil War. What caused the turn-around? The church finally woke up to its desperate situation, got serious with God, and began praying in earnest. They quit playing church, got down on their faces before God and implored Him for help. (“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways [their torpid complacency], then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”)

Brothers and sisters, the ball is not in God’s court. The ball is in our court! What will it take for enough people in the church to get so desperate at what’s going on that they will finally pray fervent, even frantic prayers that will bring down God’s saving response? What will it take? When they come for our Bibles? When they come for our children? When we have to hide in the catacombs and keep the records of our meetings in code? When they show up at our door with an executioner’s ax in one hand and a tattoo needle in the other to put the “Mark of the Beast” on us? Will we cry out to God then? When will we get serious?

In the days of the Judges, the people of God were in a similarly indifferent, apathetic, backslidden state; so much so that the husband whose concubine was slain by gang-raping homosexuals had to cut her body into 12 pieces and send a piece to each of the 12 tribes of Israel to get them outraged enough to take action. (Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself in Judges 19-20.)

Where Are God's Strategists?

By David Hobbs

I just watched a 2 ½ hour YouTube video clip of former satanic high priest Stephen Dollins. Dollins says that satanists can be broken down into 2 groups--the dabblers: those street level practitioners who are out sacrificing cats, working rituals, and otherwise wreaking spiritual mayhem (these are the dangerous ones, he says); and then the elites whom he also calls “the planners.” That’s what struck me—the satanic planners.

These are the ones who strategize how to insinuate satan’s agenda into the culture of America  while simultaneously tearing down the authority of Christianity and the Bible. It hit me like a ton of bricks! So these are the ones behind the dumbing down of America and its secularization, behind the taking over of denominational churches and pushing them into liberalism and unbelief; behind the transforming of the universities from bastions of learning and searching for truth, into brain-washing machines for the secular worldview and the pushing of anti-Christian propaganda; behind the turning of the entertainment industry into sirens for hedonism, Christian bashing, foul-mouthed debasement of everything pure and good, and rebellion against all authority (especially parental); and behind the transforming of our government schools into anti-God, anti-morality propaganda centers to brainwash our children; and behind pushing the gay agenda so hard and intimidating most American institutions such as business, media, and government into going along with their mainstreaming of the destructive gay lifestyle while shutting up every opposing voice of morality and religion.

I could go on and on, but the question arises, who else could be behind all this? Who else could be behind the removing of prayer (and God) from the public school system in 1962, and the legalizing of abortion in 1973, and other cultural milestones on our descent toward cultural disaster? Could it possibly be just happenstance? Who else would be pushing this agenda? (And doing it successfully beyond what anyone could have anticipated 50 years ago.)

I am generally not a conspiracy theorist, but this begs the question. When things truly “just happen,” they happen randomly with no pattern. Likewise, when a clear pattern emerges, it can no longer be considered random—there has to be an intelligent force behind it.

So yes, the perpetrators have to be these elites; these planners of satanism who exist in the shadows. It has taken supernatural intelligence and power to pull this off. No man or group of men could have done this by themselves. Believe me there are many who would try, men who would give everything to take over the world for themselves if only they could (just like the Hunt bros. tried to take over the market in silver trading a generation ago). But no mere men could have brought about the changes in American and world culture we have seen in the last 50 years.

Why Satanists? Why not aliens? Why not the Illuminati? The Masons? Why not one of the many groups put forward by conspiracy theorists? Listen, I’m not speaking to the world. I’m speaking to Christians who know the Bible and understand spiritual reality. God only has one enemy—the devil. Everything that is anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-morality, etc. flows from the same source. There is no other. Whether it’s satanism, witchcraft, secularism, humanism, new age, eastern religions, even “enlightened, tolerant Protestantism”… it all originates from the same source—God only has one enemy!

But I say all that to get to the real point of this post: since this is demonstrably so, and we do have this empowered group of elite, satanic planners who have been so wildly successful over the last 50 years; where are their Christian counterparts? Where are the elite, Christian strategizers working to overthrow the works of the devil and retake American society for Jesus? Has anybody seen them? Heard of them? Seen the effects of their work? Instead we have Christians always on defense, always playing catch-up, always with their fingers in the dikes trying to hold back the ever-increasing leaks. I thank God for organizations like Focus on the Family, the AFA, Right to Life, Concerned Women for America, etc. that are in the trenches resisting the onslaught of evil. But who is winning? I read their newsletters trumpeting a victory here and a victory there, yet we’re losing the war! (Their answer is always the same: send more money. Yet after all the money is sent, we’re still losing the war!)

Likewise I thank God for prayer. But 99% of every prayer I hear is a reactive prayer. We are always reacting to what the devil is doing: heal so and so who is sick, deliver my son from his addiction to alcohol, restore my backslidden wife, raise up godly leaders to replace those who have been corrupted by money or power.

But where are our Christian think-tanks praying for and implementing strategies to take back America? To take the fight to the enemy? To plunder the enemy’s camp? To bring God’s Kingdom upon the earth? To figure out what the church must do to turn defeat into victory? If you tell me such groups are indeed out there even now, I ask: where is their success? Their fruit? Isn’t the power in us supposed to be greater than the power that’s in the devil? Shouldn’t our strategizers be more effective than his? Where is the evidence of that? If we have God-empowered planners and strategizers, why are we still getting our butts kicked all over town? Why are Christians still playing church while our culture goes down in flames around us?