The Rise of Tyranny

Penn understood that the foundation of all freedom is God. When we surrender our lives to God, through Christ, He frees us. If we surrender our lives to Satan, he enslaves us. It is a tragic fact that all who have rejected the matchless claims of Christ upon their lives and service are certain to be used by Satan, either to be enslaved themselves, or to enslave others. By contrast, the freedom of Christ is riveted upon truth—

Further, that truth is to lead us to the power of Jesus to free us from sin.

One has only to be a student of history to see evidence that the setting aside of godly principles leads to tyranny. Multitudes today are entranced by the concepts of the New Age. These humanistic concepts were systematized and refined by the ancient Greeks, and inevitably led to hedonism and egocentricity, which foreshadow the collapse of society. Not only does humanism appeal to the pagan mind, but to the minds of infidels, atheists, and agnostics, who have no firm transcendent principles by which to order their lives. Humanism also finds an attraction in the heart of professed Christians who are unconverted.

But few would sustain such fervor if they had any concept of the historical development of the principles that underscore the New Age movement. New Age is simply old-fashioned pagan humanism in a new guise. The consequences of such humanism are plain to see for those who are students of history. One can only wonder how we can forget the dire consequences of humanistic philosophy.

Some have proposed a "Christian humanism." That is an oxymoron. Christianity is Christ-centered, and humanism is man-centered. If one reads uncritically the writings of the French philosophers of the eighteenth century, he may be charmed by the appealing language and concepts that are presented—concepts that appear truly noble, and that ostensibly uphold the dignity and equality of man. But events of history testify that this philosophy was a worthless sham. We must never forget that these very philosophies underlaid the French Revolution, which led to the reign of terror, in which forty thousand people literally lost their heads by the guillotine, and myriads of others lost their lives in the Napoleonic Wars.

The great watch cry in the French Revolution was, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." One cannot deny that humanism, from a cursory evaluation, upholds noble and attractive goals. It underlies many movements in society which seek to preserve the dignity of man, and to protect him against abuses from tyrannical forces. While we cannot support such goals, yet inevitably the ultimate result has been tyranny itself. The reason for the discrepancy between the goals of humanism, and its results, is not difficult to discern. Without Christ in the life, men are naturally evil and are devoid of the possession of divine power which alone can bring noble aims to society.

In many ways, humanism has proven to be a movement reacting against those concepts of former generations, when millions of oppressed people have been forced to abandon the value of life here and now, and to look only to eternal life as an answer to their poverty, misery, oppression, and persecution. We cannot deny that many claimants to the title Christian have been in the vanguard of oppression of their fellow citizens. However, when examination of such oppressions takes place, they are seen as the result of allowing pagan concepts to adulterate the divine principles of human freedom.

But humanism, swinging to the other extreme, ignores the ultimacy of eternity and measures man by himself. In so doing it replaces one evil with another. New Age concepts have been the harbinger of revolutionary concepts, contending that man has the ability to lift himself from the pit of abject wretchedness, to an elevated status where love, unity, and harmony reign. Humanism provides false hope, by proclaiming the view that man is himself able to eliminate all the injustices and inequalities that we see in the world today. It is a matter of irony that the Greeks who propounded this highly elevated view of man are the same Greeks who built their society upon slavery.

Men having failed to learn from the tragedies of the French Revolution, another small revolution took place in 1830 in Europe and, under the leadership of King Louis Philippe of France, a major revolution swept Europe in 1848, but again it failed to provide a panacea for the ills and injustices of Europe.

Karl Marx, the German philosopher, later took it upon himself to evaluate the consequences of the French Revolution and the Revolution of 1848. He declared that the principles undergirding these revolutions were sound, but that the execution of them had been faulted, leading to their failures. It was his stated purpose to explain how a humanistic revolution would succeed. The principles of Karl Marx were accepted by the Bolsheviks of Russia. This led to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and to the Communist Manifesto. The consequence was that about forty million people lost their lives under Soviet Communism.

These events having been recorded in the annals of recent history, it is inexplicable that once more large masses are looking to such faulted concepts in the New Age movement as their salvation. These humanistic concepts are expected to underpin the hope for one-world government and the one-world religion of the twenty-first century. No discerning Christian will accept such principles, which are built not upon the freedom principles of the Word of God, but rather upon man’s faulted philosophy.

Should the whole planet come under the bondage of humanistic New Age philosophy, we may expect an unparalleled slaughter of those who would resist these global aims because of religious, political, or ideological convictions. For sovereign nations to surrender their independence to a global authority will in effect lead to the surrender of their citizens to the greatest slavery known in the history of the world.

Tyranny begins when unreserved loyalty is given to fellow humans. A leader may have fulfilled great deeds of bravery, he may have been a man of unparalleled achievements, but the yielding of unqualified loyalty to human beings is the ground base of tyranny. Unwavering loyalty is safe only in surrender to God. Unthinking loyalty to a fellow human being leads to unchecked power, which inevitably will lead to tyranny. Many countries have sent their soldiers to defend the liberty of another country while depriving their own citizens of freedom. Very frequently the liberation movements that have arisen around the world, while professing to be the purveyors of liberty, have proven to be more tyrannical, once they have taken over the reins of rulership, than the government they have overthrown. Many of those who have shouted with glee and ecstasy when the "liberators" have succeeded in overthrowing the government of the country, have themselves soon found that under the "liberation" government their lot is vastly worse. Frequently they have not only forfeited their liberty, they have forfeited their lives.

The citizenry of every nation must be vigilant in protecting the freedom of the populace. If the people would always rise up in vast numbers against any attempt to impose unlawful restrictions upon their inalienable freedoms, then oppression could not survive. But all too frequently the citizens of a nation are more concerned with prosperity, comfort, ease, and pleasure than the recognition of the subtle erosion of their freedom. If freedom became the number one concern of a nation, then any government which sought to deprive its citizens of even the slightest degree of freedom would be expelled from power before it obtained dictatorial authority. The words of Samuel Adams, one of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence, should not go unnoticed.

The Eastern European nations cast off the shackles of Communism in 1989, and the Soviet Union in 1991, when the masses of citizens united against their oppressive governments. These governments, who for decades had held their people by fear, proved powerless when the people united together against their tyranny. It is indifference, fear, and cowardice of the populace which are the secret of the success of tyrannical or oppressive governments.