Biblical Prophecy Refutes Earthly Utopian Dreams

But take heed; behold, I have told you everything in advance. Mark 13:23

Utopian dreams burst onto the American mainstream consciousness in 1967 with the iconic "The Age of Aquarius/ Let the Sunshine In" medley originally part of the Broadway production of Hair, later recorded by the R&B group The 5^th Dimension in 1969. According to the lyrics, the remedy for mankind's needs is found in the planets and star constellations of our galaxy.  To gain insight into our shared path forward in peace and love, mankind must "look to the stars." The lyrics state this plainly:

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius.

The 5^th Dimension enjoyed a six week ride at number one on the Billboard charts with this breakthrough song. Clearly, Americans were ready for more peace and love sentimentality. The radio jingle "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing,"  adapted for a Coca-Cola commercial in 1971 provided another push toward the globalist dream of peace, safety, and unity. In this song we were entertained by a very early effort to condition us to multiculturalism. People of all walks of life, nationalities, and ethnicities, all gathered on a hilltop to sing kumbaya. Actually, the lyrics were much more in line with the re-emerging idea of the earth as a living organism.

I'd like to build the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees
And snow white turtle doves

I'd like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I'd like to hold it in my arms
And keep it company.

I'd like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills
For peace throughout the land.

Building the world a home? Where mankind can live in peace and unity sounds a lot like Nimrod's vision of Babel. In spite of the widespread and growing biblical illiteracy, most people know that did not work out too well for Nimrod.

This was followed by John Lennon's bestselling song "Imagine," which followed the same theme of global unity and peace, interestingly in the same year of 1971. 

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one.

When Lennon released Imagine, he was a globally minded peace activist. He famously quipped during this time: "If everybody demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace." I wholeheartedly agree with Lennon on one point; if people would get rid of their television sets, they would be much less likely influenced by the constant barrage of lies, manipulation, and corporate propaganda that insists that if we all try a little harder, elect the right people to public office, and especially if Christians would stop clinging to their Bibles and guns, the world would be on a fast-track to a utopia we have only imagined up to now.

Students of philosophy and political science as well as readers of texts of antiquity will surely interject that the real drive for an achievable utopia was first elucidated by Plato in his Republic, nearly one thousand six hundred years before Lennon or Coke made fortunes selling the idea of peace. 

Of course, Bible students know that Nimrod was the first to attempt to establish his utopian dream in the 22^nd-21^st century BC. Everyone else on the peace train is merely a Johnny-come-lately. Nimrod's utopian dream rightly ended in an earth moving event, as will this current globalist inspired, directed, and financed effort.

Governments Create the Problem and Then Promote Their Solution

Throughout the years of recorded history, mankind has had a nearly insatiable thirst for peace and safety. World Wars, domestic conflicts, political upheavals, and violent revolutions have only created a greater thirst for global security. 

A common message today that spans a diverse group of organizations is one that focuses on peace and safety as an attainable goal for the so-called global community. Governments, non-governmental agencies, environmental organizations, and even the United Nations, have all joined with countless religious organizations such as the Roman Catholic Church, Parliament of World Religions, the World Council of Churches, the Evangelical Environmental Network, and many denominations in a unified call to global peace and safety. 

Much of the church in America specifically is exhausting itself trying to make peace with the culture. Today in many places, ministry leaders are leading entire denominations into embracing ungodly behavior, illogical thinking, and unbiblical responses to real or imagined crises. They are unwittingly being moved along the dialectic path from antithesis (Jesus is the only way of salvation) to synthesis (there are many paths to God).

In some places the church has adopted a strange and biblically foreign concept of creating a safe space within the church campus, an alternative social network for believers only, so that Christians can further remove themselves from the culture. The church has also done great damage to the Gospel by attempting to create safe spaces in the body of Christ for unrepentant sinners. The most glaring example of this insanity is the church's embrace of gender confusion.

In the most recent Presidential election cycle, Hillary Clinton famously said that Christians need to change their beliefs about certain things, namely abortion. She implied that if they do not do so voluntarily then the force of the law should be applied. For Clinton, nothing is as sacrosanct as the right of women to murder unborn human beings. For people who think like Clinton, utopia is a world where women are free to do as they please with unborn children without the inconvenience of a guilty conscience brought on by people of faith.

As I am writing this article, the Democrats haven taken control of the House of Representatives and their first priority has been the creation of a spending bill to end the partial government shutdown that includes restored funding for Planned Parenthood. Something is clearly wrong when an entire political party is consumed with shoring up the barbaric act to ripping unborn humans from a woman's womb.

This is a modern picture of the utopian dream. The basis of all utopias is simply this: create an environment where the maximum amount of happiness can be experienced by the greatest number of citizens. Those that show themselves to be dissenters will be marginalized, or worse, made to appear as criminals.

Politically speaking, this means concentrating power in the hands of a select few through the manipulation of a populace. This is the strategy of the current Democrat leadership. How else do you explain the support for the murder of unborn American children and simultaneously, support for all forms of immigration?

The political machine that is Washington D.C. spends billions of dollars attempting to allegedly produce a society of worldly defined justice and equality. However, when justice discriminates against entire groups of people based on a convoluted definition of racial theory, and equality is redefined with heretofore unheard of social constructs as guidelines, how is justice or equality arrived at? How is the government assuring peace, safety, and unity by these actions?

As I stated above, peace and safety is known by many names but the goal of modern proponents is the same: create an environment where all people can be happy, content with their circumstances, and experience the comfort of emotional well-being. The late Neil Postman called it amusing ourselves to death. In other words, a virtual gulag decorated as a safe space for all.

Many Christians have unwittingly joined this nonsense by partnering with and advocating for the latest cultural movements of diversity, multiculturalism, and egalitarianism being aggressively advocated by the US Government and paid for with our tax dollars. 

Unfortunately, this drive for global peace and safety brings out the worse characteristics in human beings. In fact, two characteristics are prominent and the former works in favor of the latter. The first characteristic of man is that he is willing to give up his freedoms for the promise of safety. The second characteristic of man is that some will see the opportunity to promise safety as a vehicle for rising to power and ruling over those who would be foolish enough to give up their freedom for the "feeling" of safety.

What did Jesus say about the End of the Age and the Possibility of Peace?

Many Christians never consider the fact that Jesus is a prophet. Although they have no doubt heard many times that Jesus is Prophet, Priest, and King, it has never dawned on them that Jesus spoke prophetically many times.

Jesus' statement in Mark 13:14 is an example of this. In that passage we read:

But when you see the Abomination of Desolation standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.

Matthew's Gospel adds that Jesus says this Abomination of Desolation was spoken of through Daniel the Prophet. There are two things interesting about that statement. One is that this prophecy was fulfilled in 167 BC when Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem by slaughtering a pig on the altar of incense and erecting a statue of Zeus within its confines.

A second thing interesting about Jesus' prophecy is that is has a future fulfillment. Granted, some Christians believe that the future fulfillment of Jesus' words was completed in 70AD when the Roman General Titus crushed a Jewish rebellion and destroyed the Temple. That does not come close to defining the abomination Jesus spoke of.

I encourage readers to read Mark's Gospel starting at chapter 13 for the full context of what is being said there. As Jesus and His disciples left the Temple and the city of Jerusalem, an unidentified disciple remarked to Jesus that the Temple buildings were a beautiful thing to see. Jesus' response to this disciple is Mark 13:2. The reason for this response from Jesus is found in Mark 11-12. Let me summarize those chapters briefly.

Mark 11 contains the narrative of Jesus' so-called "Triumphal Entry" into the city of Jerusalem. We know that day as Palm Sunday. In Mark 11:11 we read that Jesus went into the Temple and looked around and left. In Mark 11:13 He cursed the fig tree which scholars agree represented judgement upon Israel and apostate Judaism.

Then in Mark 11:15 Jesus returns to the Temple, cleanses it the second time by running everyone out. He pronounces judgement by recalling the words of the prophet Jeremiah 7-8 in Mark 11:17. This prompted the Jewish religious leaders to begin seriously discussing the "how" they were going to murder Jesus. They had already determined they would murder Him; all that was left was the manner in which to carry it out.

In Mark 12 Jesus tells the Jewish religious leaders that He knew they were going to murder Him, the Vineyard owner's son. The religious leaders knew exactly what Jesus was claiming for Himself in that parable and they knew He was indicting them for what they were thinking and attempting to do concerning Him. That is what we read in Mark 12:12.

The religious leaders went away and hatched plan to attempt to trick Jesus into committing treason against Rome. The hope of the religious leaders was that Jesus would say something that they could take back to the Romans and have Jesus arrested, tried as a criminal, and executed. In other words, they were hoping the Romans would do their dirty work for them. That is Mark 12:13-17. 

When that plan failed the religious leaders sent the Sadducees to create a theological incident. The aim in Mark 12:18-27 was to make Jesus look like He opposed the teaching of Moses and thereby discredit Him before the people. Jesus told the Sadducees that they were ignorant of the Scriptures, which meant Moses, and that they consequently had no power from God to rule anyone.

The last effort of the Sanhedrin is found in Mark 12:28-34, where a scribe approaches Jesus with a somewhat more whimsical approach and ends up being encouraged by Jesus to keep following his line of reasoning concerning wat was pleasing to God.

Jesus gives the Jews one last chance to understand who He was by asking a question to everyone gathered to Him in the Temple: 

How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David? David himself said in the Holy Spirit; the LORD said to my LORD, Sit at My right hand, until I put Your enemies beneath Your feet. David himself calls Him Lord; so in what sense is He his son?

Then Jesus warns the people of the wickedness of the apostate religious system they were observing. That's Mark 12:38-40. Next He gives an illustration of what He just said in Mark 12:41-44. By the way, this was not praise for the widow who gave her last remaining money to the Temple Treasury. Jesus called the disciples attention to this sad situation because the widow was a victim of a system that He had previously said in Mark 12:40 "devours widow's houses."

That brings us back to Mark 13. When Jesus and His disciples were leaving the Temple complex and the city, the unnamed disciple remarks at the beauty of the Temple. That elicited Jesus' comment about the coming destruction. How could this disciple have missed the preceding events of the entire day where Jesus spoke judgement?

Peter, James, John, and Andrew were startled by Jesus' comment because as soon as they arrived at the Mount of Olives they pulled Jesus aside and asked Him a series of questions. Mark 13:3-4: Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled?

Jesus' first response was what? Peace and safety will prevail upon the earth! Then I will return! If you have your Bible open you know that is not what Jesus said. He said in Mark 13:5-13 that:

• Mass deception would mark those days.
• False Christ's – not necessarily only people claiming to be Christ but false Christ's, meaning also unbiblical theologies concerning Christ.
• Wars; nations against nation, kingdom against kingdom.
• Famines, earthquakes.
• Persecution of true followers of Jesus even by family members, meaning people who call themselves Christian will begin to murder true Christians.
• Matthew's parallel passage says false prophets will arise within the church, and that love among the brethren will grow cold.

Does this sound like a world heading for peace, safety, and unity? This is where you dear reader, need to understand what is going to happen in the near future. Mark 13:14 is a key passage. I repeat it here for your convenience.

But when you see the Abomination of Desolation standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.

Who and what is the Abomination of Desolation spoken of by Jesus? I've already told you that in one context it was Antiochus Epiphanes who desecrated the Temple in 167 BC. That had already happened nearly two hundred years before Jesus spoke this prophecy. That tells us what? It tells us that Jesus had a future fulfillment in mind. What is that fulfillment? That will be revealed in Part 2 of "Biblical Prophecy Refutes Earthly Utopian Dreams."

Pastor Mike Spaulding

¹ Medley: Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. Songwriters: Galt Mac Dermot / James Rado / Gerome Ragni.

² This song was produced by Billy Davis and became famous as the "Hilltop Coke Song." See more information here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27d_Like_to_Teach_the_World_to_Sing_%28In_Perfect_Harmony%29 

³ I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. Songwriters: William M Backer / Roger F. Cook / Roquel Davis / Roger Greenaway

⁴ Imagine lyrics © Downtown Music Publishing. Songwriters: John Winston Lennon.

⁵ The Parliament of World Religions has on its website the following two prominent headlines: (1) The Power of Love: Pursuing Global Understanding, Reconciliation, and Change. (2) For a More Just, Peaceful, and Sustainable World.

⁶ Clinton has made these types of comments frequently to abortion advocates. See here for one example - https://www.lifenews.com/2015/04/27/hillary-clinton-force-christians-to-change-their-religious-views-to-support-abortion/  

⁷ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, (London: Penguin Books, 1985).

⁸ Matthew 24:15.

⁹ This viewpoint is called Preterism.

¹0 John 7:1.

¹1 Mark 12:35-37.