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TitleThe Darkest Hour: Behind Us and Ahead of Us

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January 2018

If you haven’t seen the recently released film, “Darkest Hour,” starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, you really must. It’s a stunning historical portrayal and recreation of a moment when Western civilization hung in the balance as Hitler’s quest for the Thousand-Year Reich came perilously close to becoming a reality. Were it not for God’s instrument of Winston Churchill, only God Himself knows how it would have ended. Indeed, Churchill’s whole life prepared him to stand in the gap until America joined the war and kept us all from speaking only German or forfeiting our lives because we couldn’t fit into Hitler’s plan for the master race and the demonically controlled new religious worldview.

The problem this movie faces is that a stunningly dumbed-down audience of hundreds of millions of Americans and fellow-Westerners have neither the historical context to truly understand what is portrayed in this movie, nor the prophetic context in which to relate to the dangers it illustrates which we are now being confronted with once again. While we see no Hitler or similar war machine being prepared to “right the wrongs” of the last world war which Hitler used to play the German people’s need for “justice,” a far more insidious caldron of destruction is surely brewing. It is a spiritually driven yet ideologically framed set of ideas designed to capture an historically ignorant global populace.

It has not yet pulled together its net of essential ideas and carefully created phrases, nor has it settled on a permanent name, but it is currently mobilizing under the name of “progressivism.” Stealing from the scientific notion of evolution, it presses the political ideology that its ideas and existence are history’s most current updraft which will contribute to giving humanity the ultimate solution to the issues of inequality and injustice. Like all previous Luciferian conspiracies, it rides the wave of man’s quest to resolve the problem of sin and fallenness apart from Christ. Its core strategies are the popular elimination of historical reality, the demonizing of any public scrutiny, the mocking and shaming of anyone who would expose such plans, and the domestication of a prophetically driven Kingdom theology from God’s Ekklesia/Church. Put another way, if an antichrist figure is coming, he is surfing on the wave of historical ignorance and the mockery of those exposing it.

One of the Ten Master Principles of life (posted below) that we have identified in The Statesmen Project is called “Results-Based Reality.” It is based on the concrete reality that ideas have consequences and that all ideas must ultimately be judged on the results they produce when played out in the material world. This scientifically driven view posits the truth that results both verify and trump opinions. In the short-run, some results may be inconclusive, however, in the long-run, history virtually always makes its verdict clear. The “progressive view” pushes another conclusion: Truth is in the eye of the beholder and all “evidence” is ultimately subjective. This idea is far, far more dangerous than any of Hitler’s. In the same way that Churchill understood Hitler’s true nature and plans years before his contemporaries who dwelled in denial, some of us see the specter of another coming global conflict as God’s Kingdom drives to the surface of human affairs as an antidote to subjectivism.

Much, much more needs to be said, but I cannot pass up the point to be illustrated here by looking at presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Obviously, a kind-hearted soul, Bernie pushes economic socialism as our answer to virtually all social injustices. Equally obvious is that Bernie missed the results-based reality of applied economic theory in the 20th century. He can get away with this “Mr. Magoo fantasy” only because of progressivism’s dumbing-down of the last two generations of America’s college graduates and the pincer-movement strategy to mock the notion of objective reality. Does capitalism need serious ethical and structural reform? Yes, yes, and yes, but its proven ability to move the masses upward in terms of economic mobility is absurdly beyond the ability to deny it. As Maggie Thatcher wisely opined, “Socialism works great until you run out of spending other people’s money.” Touché.

Back to Mr. Churchill and his prescient view of reality: We need an army of Churchills today, and I’m sure God is grooming them as He has done before. For now, I encourage some of you to read William Manchester’s books on Churchill, especially the second book in The Last Lion series: Alone, 1932-1940. All of us who understand the realities of what I am so ineptly saying need to continue to relationally congeal, strategize, and deepen our knowing that our “darkest hour” lies ahead. We shall have our chance to make history if we are able to see its trajectory. To those who can hear it, that is…

THE BOTTOM LINE.

 P.S. Seriously, go see this movie.


The Ten Master Principles for Building Lives and Organizations (Nations):

1. Transcendence (Absolutes)
   ○ Man’s inherent rights
   ○ Supreme issues
   ○ The starting point for strategic planning
2. Jurisdictional Government (Responsibility):
   ○ Self-government
   ○ Nuclear family government
   ○ Ecclesiastic government
   ○ Civil government
   ○ Responsibility & functioning social order
3. The Separation of Powers (Freedom):
   ○ The counter-balancing division of government designed to limit tyranny.
4. Division of Labor (Engiftment/Efficiency):
   ○ The efficiency and productivity created by skill-endowed labor, singular-product focus, and coordinated team-work
5. Localism-Centralization (Choice)
   ○ Pressing decision-making to those most affected by the decision or application of others’ decisions.
6. Service-Based Power (Love):
   ○ The use of authority and power to enhance the value and welfare of others
7. Limits (Safety, Goals, Sustainability)
   ○ The concept protecting us from harm
   ○ The concept that limits can hinder us from progress or freedom
8. Justice-Equality (Inputs, Rewards, Common Accountability)
   ○ Due rewards or penalties
   ○ Common human value and rights
9. Results-Based Reality (Truth):
   ○ Performance-based evaluations
   ○ Truth in action
10. The Bridge of Trust (Relational Building):
   ○ Relational confidence in people, systems, or Ideas