Perspective on the Decline (or the Ascension?) of the American Empire

Perspective on the decline, or is it the rise, of the American empire? Alex Newman joins us today, right here on the Christian Real View Radio Program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host. supported radio ministry.

You can connect with us by visiting our website, thechristianrealview.org, calling toll-free 1-888-646-2233 or by writing to box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. There are wars and rumors of wars taking place in Israel and around the world. Armies from the north, like Russia, are flexing their military might in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Armies from the east, like China, are enlarging their economic and military power. So what does all this mean for the United States of America, arguably the greatest empire in history? Well, this country is unwilling to convincingly win wars anymore, as we've seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam, but very willing to print and spend trillions of dollars into debt. Instead of championing the values that made America into the powerhouse it was, like individual liberties, free market economics, biblically based moral values, a spirit of Marxism, division, immorality, and self-loathing vexes our nation. This rejection of God and His wisdom are similar symptoms that cause other historic empires to decline or collapse. So is America on the same course?

Alex Newman, international journalist and analyst with Liberty Sentinel Media, joins us today to discuss a wide variety of issues, military, economic, social, and others. Is the United States in decline or are we actually rising to be leader of the prophesied global order? And before we get to the interview, let's define what an empire is. An empire is a nation that has the ability to project and defend itself militarily.

That seems obvious. If you can't defend yourself militarily, you're not going to have a country anymore. An empire has the ability to hedge aggression in the world.

They have so much military influence that they can keep other actors from acting on other nations. An empire has great wealth and influence, whether it's economic wealth, whether it's cultural influence as the U.S. exports around the world, or even innovation, the inventing of things and technology. These all make up an empire and make it powerful. Now, there have been many empires in the past, but just take two, the Roman Empire and the British Empire. They exerted influence over the globe or over the region for hundreds of years, but both of them either declined or collapsed. The Roman Empire had been in decline for hundreds of years for a variety of reasons, some of which are similar to what we're facing today, and was finally defeated militarily in 476 A.D. The British Empire declined after World War II, even though the Allies won the war, because it was America's military power primarily that made the difference in that war to win it. It used to be said that the sun never sets on the British Empire because they had so many countries under their authority around the globe.

That's not the case today. Without the United States, Britain is just another country that wouldn't be able to defend itself in any major conflict. There are many within our nation, especially on the political left, within the educational system, higher education, and corporations, and many others, who are working toward the American Empire that it would decline and actually collapse from its current state. They want the U.S. to be globalistic, not nationalistic. They want the kind of personal autonomy apart from God to kill pre-born babies in the womb up until the time of birth for any reason. They believe gender is a man-made patriarchal construct, and that they can change it. We're seeing that all over the place in our country.

Basically, everything God says in his word, they work to replace. They know that they know that the U.S. and Israel are the oppressors in the world, and thus need to be diminished or even eliminated as they currently operate. They have great hope for a future when man unites to order the world apart from the oppressive Christian influence as they would see it. Now, this worldview is not just overseas. It's prominent within our own land. And as Jesus said in Mark chapter 3, if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.

This division is well exemplified by a recent poll that found that nearly 50% of younger Americans side with the Palestinians over Israel, even after 1,300 or 1,400 Jewish civilians were butchered by Islamists. Now, in light of all the debauchery, the debt, and the division in our country, I'm sure you've wondered whether the American house will continue to stand. It's notable that the U.S. isn't specifically referred to in Scripture. Does that mean we decline and collapse as an empire? Or could our rebellion actually be an ascension to leadership of the global God-rejecting government led by Antichrist, prophesied in Daniel in Revelation? Perhaps the U.S. is the prominent nation of nations that is referred to as Babylon the Great, described in Revelation 17 and 18, that most premillennial interpreters of Scripture understand to be an evil world system. This Babylon exerts great influence in the world, has tremendous wealth as the center of world commerce, is full of false religion, and is known for persecuting Christians.

That sounds an awful lot like America to me, but of course we can't be sure. So let's get to our guest today, Alex Newman. He's one of a handful of people that I know who is able to speak on a wide variety of issues that we'll be discussing today, bringing a biblical perspective to bear. He will get into what brought down some empires of the past, covering things like military to economics to social division.

The conversation was so the conversation was so wide-ranging that we're going to air half this week and half next week. Now please know we are not trying to make you fear. Neither of us and no one else knows what's going to happen in the future. But we're trying to consider current events in light of where Scripture says things will end up.

We do know that. Not so we can precisely predict what's ahead, but so that we can be discerning and not deceived. The propaganda war taking place today is very strong, and Jesus says that it's going to get worse in the tribulation period.

In Matthew 24, Christ said, for false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect, or true believers. So we hope this discussion this week and next does two things. That it prepares you for the present moment we're in and what's coming in the future.

And secondly, we hope it causes you to love God more than anything of this world, even your own life. Because if America continues to transform into a globalist entity, we are going to lose much of what we have enjoyed in this nation in the past. Freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and religion, freedom to move as we please, to petition the government, to buy and sell. We may even lose our own material goods and properties. That may sound like a tribulation scenario, but keep in mind that much of that could easily precede the rapture of the church because all of that goes on in other nations today. Think about North Korea or China or the Middle East. So let's try to understand what is happening right now. And then after the interview, we'll talk about how to have peace in the midst of all the turmoil and uncertainty.

Alex, thank you for coming on the Christian Real View today. I'd like to start out with sort of a general historical question as we talk about the perspective on the decline and collapse of empires. What are the dominoes that take place or something like that happens? And I'm specifically referring to this country because there's lots of markers and different aspects of our country that are troubling, to say the least. From a historical perspective, perhaps you could pick an empire or two or three, British Empire, Roman and so on, and describe how they went from being a very powerful empire and they either declined greatly, so they lost that status or actually collapsed.

And what were the main pillars of their society that crumbled? Well, first of all, thank you for having me, David. It's an honor and a pleasure to be with you again. I so appreciate all the very important work that you do for Christ and the church and for godly values.

So thank you for having me. And I've studied this issue, the decline of great nations and the decline of great empires. And there are several threads in common that all of them seem to have. One is a decline in morality, which is manifested in the decline of the family, an explosion of promiscuity, widespread proliferation of homosexuality and different sexual mores that previously had been depressed. And of course, we see that very clearly in our country right now. Another is out of control government spending.

The government just gets radically overextended. And this is manifested in wars in diverse places. You saw this with the Romans, you saw this with the Greeks, and of course, you saw this with the British. Afghanistan, interestingly, is a kind of a thread that runs in common through several of the big empires of the last couple hundred years. Ironically, it's been dubbed the graveyard of empires. You had the Soviet empire really suffering in a major way as a result of their occupation of Afghanistan.

The losses that were inflicted militarily and financially on the Soviets were just catastrophic. Before that, the British got a taste of that when they tried to occupy Afghanistan. You know, Afghanistan is a very difficult nation to occupy and to rule over. It's very mountainous, a very independent people, lots and lots of weapons, a lot of Islamism.

And so it's a very difficult place to try to govern. And we just saw that with the United States. Twenty years and trillions of dollars later and we replaced the Taliban with the Taliban. So, you know, the cost in lives and treasure is just absolutely horrendous. Then you add to that the fact that so much of our military equipment, billions and billions of dollars of our military equipment were left there now to be used against our friends, against our allies, against innocent people. So you have this propensity to expand government and to try to expand the influence of a particular government and that often ends up being catastrophic for that nation.

You also have internal subversion, right? As you have this explosion in spending, you see this division, you see various factions rising up and it often manifests itself in treason. And I think a lot of these great nations and great empires throughout human history, once they become big and once they become great, they tend to attract evil people, ambitious people who try to get into leadership. This is often manifested in conspiracies and assassinations and subversion and trees and things like this.

And of course, we're seeing that on a massive scale in the United States of America. But, you know, I think we also need to look at the Bible and the Bible offers, I think, some very clear insight when you look at the sovereignty of God. There are several references to how God divided mankind into nations and in several places, God actually tells us that he plays a major role in this. If you go to Acts chapter 17 in verse 26, God talks about how he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth. And it says he determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. So I think there is an issue of God acting sovereignly in the rise and fall of great nations. In Deuteronomy chapter 32, you read that God gave the nations their inheritance, he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the people.

And so I think there is very much an active role that God plays in all this. But it pains me to say it, David, because of course, I love my country. I haven't lived here for very long. I've grown up overseas and spent most of my life overseas. But I think that has only contributed even more to my passionate love for our country, for our heritage, for our traditions. And it pains me to see these parallels. But America, unfortunately, is very much in a situation similar to what the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, the British were in, as their empires headed into decline.

And I think it would not be surprising at all to see that process accelerate in the years ahead. That was very well answered. Alex Newman with us today on The Christian Real View. He's a journalist and he's the CEO of Liberty Sentinel Media. The website is LibertySentinel.org.

You can find the link at our website, thechristianrealview.org. He's involved in a wide range of issues, education, investing, consulting. He's going to be speaking to a lot of different topics on our program today. And let's start with one of the ones you mentioned, this government spending as when it gets profligate and it gets too big and too spread out and currency problems and inflation.

This spells big trouble for an empire like ours. But before we get to that, we'll take a brief time out for some ministry announcements. Much more coming up with Alex Newman on The Christian Real View radio program.

I'm David Wheaton. When Jesus is laying out the Holy Spirit's job description in John 16, and he says it's to your advantage that I go, think about that for just a second. Jesus, the Christ, tells his disciples, it's actually advantageous that I go. And they're thinking, what? We don't want you to go.

Who could be better for us? What does he then explain? David That was Pastor Costi Hinn, who was raised in and then saved from the distortions of the Holy Spirit that are so prevalent today. Costi's new book, Knowing the Spirit, Who He Is, What He Does, and How He Can Transform Your Christian Life, graciously clarifies truth from error and is available for a donation of any amount to The Christian Real View. To order this 261-page softcover book that retails for $19.99, go to thechristianrealview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Scripture commands that children are to be brought up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Offering biblically sound resources for children is one of our top ministry priorities. At our store at thechristianrealview.org, you will find carefully selected children's Bibles and books, along with video and audio resources. Check out the Bible infographics for kids books, Little Pilgrim's Progress, and the popular Adam Raccoon set. Theo is a 15-episode video series addressing key doctrines of the faith that is a must-see for children and adults. Satan and the world are bent on capturing the heart and mind of your child.

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I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website thechristianrealview.org where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is perspective on the decline or is it the rise of the American empire? Alex Newman, journalist and CEO of Liberty Sentinel Media, is our guest.

Alex, I went to a website called the Peter Peterson Foundation. I don't know much about it, but here's the factoid that they had on there. They said the U.S. is approaching record levels of debt. Debt held by the public totaled 97% of GDP, gross domestic product, at the end of 2022 and is on track to exceed its previous all-time high, which occurred just after World War II by the year 2029.

You have a real background in economics. Maybe you could explain, Alex, this ratio of debt that we're holding in the U.S. to our gross domestic product and whether it's worse now than it was at other times in our history. And at what point does our debt hinder the U.S. ability to operate at full projected power?

Yeah, there are several things going on here, David. All of them are very, very frightening from an economic perspective. And we are really in uncharted territory in some ways because the United States in this very, very unique way has managed to have its dollar serve as the global reserve currency in a totally fiat world. And by fiat, I mean, we're now dealing with currencies that have value by government decree. Historically, money has virtually always been backed by something, especially a dominant currency. Typically, that has been precious metals.

Of course, the Bible talks plenty about precious metals and precious metals have a few advantages in that they are durable, they're scarce, they're portable, they're divisible. So it's just been a natural choice for currencies. Now, after World War II, with much of the world in shambles, the U.S. had about 50 percent of global GDP, 50 percent of everything that was produced in the world was being produced here in the United States, even though we only had 2 percent of the population. It was natural for the U.S. dollar to become the dominant currency, to become the global reserve. But at that time, the dollar was still at least tenuously connected to gold. In the early 1930s, we had a weird situation where FDR tried to ban private ownership of gold through executive order, but still the U.S. dollar was officially backed by gold. Foreign powers, foreign central banks could still trade their dollars for gold.

And so even though a lot of currencies had moved to fiat status, all of those currencies could still be traded on an open international market for U.S. dollars. And in theory, at least those dollars were backed by gold. Well, all that changed in 1971 when Richard Nixon cut the final link to the gold standard. He basically told foreign governments that we would no longer be redeeming U.S. dollars in gold. And that set up what really is, as far as we have in recorded history, a unique and unprecedented situation where the entire world was anchored to a fiat currency. During those years, the Federal Reserve Bank, which, by the way, is not a federal institution, even though it was created by Congress and has some links to the federal government, is a privately owned central banking system. But what has happened here is the Federal Reserve has created massive amounts of new currency.

Now, they've been able to keep the U.S. dollar as the global reserve as a result of paying it to oil and convincing a lot of the oil producing nations and governments to only sell oil in international markets and U.S. dollars. But that even appears to be rapidly approaching its end. And so we're headed into uncharted waters here. The debt is absolutely out of control. In real terms, there has never been a larger debtor entity in all of recorded human history right now, depending on whose numbers you believe. And of course, there's a lot of obfuscation by the federal government.

Unfortunately, they are very dishonest in many ways. If you believe their numbers were now over 30 trillion in debt. But of course, they have very interesting accounting tricks whereby they conceal a lot of depending on, again, whose numbers you look at. We now have over 200 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities.

These are monies that the federal government has promised to someone, whether it be retirees or people who are relying on government assistance for medical care or dental care or food, things like this. We're talking now hundreds of trillions of dollars. This is maybe 10 times greater than our GDP. Government spending is at record levels. They're spending now just at the federal level over 6 trillion dollars every year. You add to that the state and local spending.

At this point, government consumes, depending again on what state you live in and whose numbers you believe, something close to 50 percent of everything produced in our economy is now being consumed by government at some level. This is not sustainable. This will inevitably crash to the ground. It's going to be very, very painful for Americans. And unfortunately, I believe it can lead very easily into a global currency system.

They've been preparing the International Monetary Fund for this for a very long time. And it's hard to overstate the economic ramifications for Americans, for consumers, for businesses. Imagine not being able to afford imports of virtually anything almost overnight if this were to happen suddenly and you realize what a position we're in. Right now, Americans produce very little of value. We still produce some weapons. We still produce some food. But the goods and services that keep our infrastructure running, the goods and services that keep food on our table, the goods and services that keep our lights on.

These are now largely produced, I would argue, by deliberate policy choices of the U.S. government, by the communist Chinese, by people in other nations. So I believe we are headed into an economic cataclysm of unprecedented proportions. And I think it's going to affect Americans in a profound way, really worse than other people because of the situation with the dollar and the unique situation with the reserve currency and the out of control debts. I believe Americans are going to face some real economic hardship, probably in the not too distant future.

Alex Newman is our guest. And just to follow up on your answer there, what does the average person do about this great debt that we're in and the fact that our money is being greatly devalued? Inflation is gobbling up what we made in the past.

It's not worth as much anymore. And the fact that going off the reserve currency of the dollar and then also going to a digital currency, it doesn't sound like actually owning gold will actually be worthwhile because we're going to have a digital currency and that's the way it's going to go. So talk about the scenario where this goes and what can people do, if anything, to protect yourself in some way so you're not just caught in this vacuum on the elevator crashing down? Yeah, that's a very good question, David.

And unfortunately, it's not one that I have a good answer to. I tell Christians, first and foremost, you need to get comfortable with the idea of losing absolutely everything. And that doesn't mean you're going to lose everything, but you need to be comfortable with the idea that everything you think you have, your 401k, your retirement, all of it could basically disappear in a very rapid way. And as Christians, we're told to store our treasure in heaven, not on earth.

Now, we don't want to misunderstand that. That doesn't mean like we don't have an obligation to feed our families. We don't have an obligation to make a living. Of course, we must do those things. But we need to, I think, get comfortable with the idea that things may deteriorate economically speaking very rapidly.

Now, I never give people financial advice, but what I do happily tell people is what I have done with my own family to try to protect our meager savings and try to take seriously my responsibility to care for those within my household. You know, gold and silver have historically held their value very well. But as I mentioned earlier, David, the federal government, using just an executive order from FDR, has previously ordered the mass confiscation of gold from all Americans. I mean, they just with one stroke of a pen, they said it is now illegal to own gold.

Will they do that again? I think it's much less likely today than it was back in the 1930s because gold ownership was much more widespread at that time. Today, a very small fraction of the population owns any significant amount of gold beyond just some jewelry and maybe a historic coin that somebody maybe passed down in your family. So there may be less of a risk of that. I do believe that rural land can be a good investment. Unfortunately, we're also dealing with a situation where property rights are being very rapidly eroded. And we're in one of these epochs, if you will, where things can change very rapidly. We're in a revolutionary period. And in previous revolutionary periods all around the world, private property rights have not been respected. So you could go out and buy a huge tract of farmland.

And if you can't defend it, you may not own that farmland, depending on what happens as the next government comes into play. I do think people should be prudent here. And without trying to sound alarmist, I think it would be wise for people to make sure they have extra of what they think their family might need. By that, I very much include food, water, basic necessities.

You know, when you go to the grocery store, instead of buying one thing of dish soap, maybe buy two instead of buying one can of soup, maybe buy three and maybe just have a little bit of an extra stockpile. Here in Florida, it makes sense to do that. We get hit by hurricanes regularly. I haven't spent that much time in Florida. And yet I've seen the grocery store shut down for two weeks at a time.

I've seen the power go out for two weeks at a time. So these types of things can happen. Broadly speaking, I think people should be thinking about these things. I think people should be preparing for economic turmoil ahead. I do think people should be diversified when it comes to their investments. Right now, the way interest rates are going, the government and the Federal Reserve are really encouraging. They're not saying it, but they're really encouraging people to move all their money into bonds. That's going to cause the stock market to suffer. Whether lending the U.S. government money at this point in history is a wise investment, I'll leave that to the listener to determine. I, for one, would be very skeptical of lending the worst debtor entity in all of human history much more money, even if they're paying five or 10 or 20 percent.

You know, right now it's at about five. Without sounding alarmist, again, we're headed into some very difficult economic times. And I think people need to be prudent in their preparations. Alex Newman is our guest today on the Christian Realities. We talk about perspective on the decline and collapse of empires.

What are the markers? We're not making predictions this is going to happen next week, but there are a lot of signs in the different pillars that hold up a society in this country that do not look good. And so what can we as Christians do to not live in obsessive fear, by the way, and try to prep for, you know, 10 years of nuclear war and live underground in a bunker. But as Alex was just saying, you might want to have some buffer against whether it's something turns wrong in our society or a God caused disaster or whatever.

There is some wisdom to be used here as to what you should do with your money and some of the things that you have to keep for your family and those in your church and so forth. Alex, let's go into the military aspect of an empire because that's obviously the biggest empires had the strongest militaries might makes right, unfortunately, in this world. Why do you think so much armed conflict war has arisen in the last several years since Joe Biden came into office after President Trump? Is that just coincidence that all of a sudden now we're watching this war with Russia and Ukraine and we're just really almost in a proxy war with Russia. We see what's going on in Israel now with Hamas and potentially escalating in that region or beyond.

Why is that happening? And what is the goal of the Biden administration to manage all of this versus what the U.S. interests should be in the midst of all these conflicts? Yeah, great questions, David. And I think this needs to be examined on several different levels.

I'll start with the superficial level. I believe there are very powerful forces in this world that want war. Of course, we know Satan loves war. I mean, Satan loves to see families destroyed. Satan loves to see children killed and women killed in armed conflict.

He hates mankind and especially hates God's people. So on that level, that's not surprising. But on a practical level, these people who are obsessed with the idea of creating a one world government, of undoing God's design for mankind, that we should be separated into nations, they have determined. And this is not speculation. They say so publicly in their own reports. They have determined that war is actually the most effective way of undermining national sovereignty and paving the way toward advancing globalism or internationalism, this effort to undermine national sovereignty and build first regional governments and then world governments.

And there are several documents where they've made this very clear. Back in the early 1960s, the State Department commissioned a report. The report ended up being called A World Effectively Controlled by the United Nations. It was written by a globalist, Lincoln Bloomfield, who had been very closely linked to the intelligence agencies of the OSS and later the CIA, also who was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, which is an organization that was essentially set up by people who wanted to undermine national sovereignty and build up a one world system.

He explains in this report, he calls it present evolutionary trends. He says it would take hundreds of years to get to the end goal of a one world government. He says the fastest way to accelerate that process is to use crises, war and the threat of war. And so from their perspective, war is a very useful mechanism to bring this about.

And obviously there are very clear examples of this. After World War I, they tried to set up the League of Nations. The only reason that failed to take root as kind of the nucleus of a global government is because the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted against getting the United States involved.

So they had to go back to the drawing board. Well, World War II came around. And what did we see in the aftermath of World War II? We had the United Nations was born, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the nucleus of what eventually would become the European Union.

It was called the European Coal and Steel Community. At that time, every single one of those institutions was justified by World War II, by the prospect of a future World War. People were sick of war. They weren't willing to have more of their children die in war. And they said, OK, fine, we have to set up global institutions and surrender some piece of our sovereignty and give them money, maybe even give up some of our freedom. That's a price we're willing to pay if it means the grocery store will be open, if it means my children don't have to go die in some meat grinder.

And so that was a very, very effective mechanism. Now, in tandem with all that, David, we have forces that very much hope to destroy the United States of America. And again, this is not speculation. Some of them say it openly, right? We've got the mullahs in Iran, you know, chanting death to America, death to Israel, a great Satan little say, you know, some of these campaign very openly for the destruction of the United States of America.

Others are much more quiet about it. Now, during the previous administration, there was a high ranking individual at the National Security Council. His name was Rich Higgins. He was the director of policy and planning there. And he wrote a memo that I think really should be mandatory reading. It's incredibly profound. It's well thought out and very, very important for understanding what's going on in our country right now. He talks about something he describes as a deep state that recognizes no limits on its power, that very much sees itself as kind of the Hegelian view of government, kind of God bestriding the earth, right?

Obviously not a biblical idea, but from the pit of hell, you might say. And he describes this bizarre, at least seemingly bizarre at first glance alliance between globalists, Islamists, communists, socialists, and others. And he says they are united in their goal of destroying the United States of America, not just as a nation, but even as an ideal. And I think what he was referring to there, he didn't elaborate on that, but I think what he was referring to there is the principles that our nation was founded on.

These were largely distilled from the Bible by Christian men who had a biblical worldview. They said, you know, God gave you a right to life. The purpose of government is to punish evil. Therefore, government must help you protect your right to life.

It must punish those who commit evil in the form of murder or theft if someone takes your property. So these are biblical ideals distilled into governing documents that are really at the foundation of our country. And it's not enough to just destroy America and take us off the playing field as a serious power.

Even the ideas that our country was founded on have to be discredited. And so when you take this international alliance and you realize that they have very powerful allies right here in our country, including many at the highest levels of government, at the highest levels of the business world, you take that and you realize, wow, it looks like there's a war on America. And so I do believe that there is a plan to launch another global conflagration. If they can't get it out of Russia, Ukraine, maybe they'll get it out of free China versus communist China. If they can't get it there, maybe they'll get it in the Middle East.

If they can't get it in the Middle East, maybe they'll get it on the Korean Peninsula. But there's this obsessive drive to have the world go back to war and out of that to then build what they frequently describe as a new world order. So I think Americans and especially Christians should be very aware that we're being on many levels deceived by dishonest voices in the media, by dishonest voices in the government. And there are much more sinister agendas at work than the kind of simplistic narratives that we see portrayed in the press. Yeah, that's very interesting because ultimately, you know, who doesn't want to live in peace and safety in their own home with their family?

And when you get people out of that safety, they're almost willing to do anything to accept any sort of global governance to get to that point. Alex Newman with us today here on The Christian Real View, a journalist, the CEO of Liberty Sentinel Media. I would encourage you to go there. Lots of things to partake of, to sign up for, to watch his podcasts, other things that take place there, liberty sentinel.org, or we have it linked at our website, the Christian real view.org. Let's take a brief pause to tell you about some ministry resources. You are listening to the Christian Real View Radio Program.

I'm David Wheaton. God's truth is enduringly true throughout all the generations. It transcends culture. The church is always going to be an embattled people. If it's swimming with the tide, it's not being the church of Jesus Christ.

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Order at thechristianrealview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233 or write to box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. When Jesus is laying out the Holy Spirit's job description in John 16 and he says it's to your advantage that I go, think about that for just a second. Jesus, the Christ, tells his disciples, it's actually advantageous that I go. And they're thinking, what? We don't want you to go.

Who could be better for us? What does he then explain? That was Pastor Costi Hinn, who was raised in and then saved from the distortions of the Holy Spirit that are so prevalent today. Costi's new book, Knowing the Spirit, Who He Is, What He Does, and How He Can Transform Your Christian Life, graciously clarifies truth from error and is available for a donation of any amount to The Christian Real View. To order this 261-page softcover book that retails for $19.99, go to thechristianrealview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233 or write to box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Welcome back to The Christian Real View.

I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website, thechristianrealview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is perspective on the decline or is it the rise of the American empire?

Alex Newman, journalist and CEO for Liberty Sentinel Media, is our guest. Alex, the next issue is the worldview of the world. You've been talking about this already, but at the highest levels of globalism, the UN, for instance, the World Economic Forum, you've talked about much, and the global reset there, but the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, made a remark at the UN comments on the war between Israel and Hamas the other day.

I'm just going to play that soundbite and follow up with a question. I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel. Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring, and kidnapping of civilians or the launching of rockets against civilian targets. It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence. Their economy is stifled, their people displaced, and their homes demolished.

Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing. But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas and those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Could you comment on this sentiment that is so prevalent, not only from the UN Secretary General, but this is the same thing we are hearing on street protests all over our country and all over the world now, especially on college campuses, that are drawing a moral equivalency that Israel is really to blame in this because they're the occupiers of this land. They're oppressing the Palestinian people.

How would you respond to that? Well, there are very powerful forces, some of which I just described, that have a vested interest in perpetuating this narrative and in perpetuating this conflict. Unfortunately, many of these powerful forces are right here in the United States.

But let's start with Antonio Guterres. Antonio Guterres is not just the Secretary General of the United Nations. Prior to that, he was the head of something called the Socialist International. It's not very well known in the United States, but it is an incredibly powerful organization. It's an alliance of really all of the major socialist parties around the world and many of the communist parties around the world.

And some of the members of this alliance have the blood of millions of innocent people on their hands. And when you understand the relationship between the communists and the socialists and the Islamists, suddenly this starts to make a lot more sense. One of the things that we learned from one of the highest ranking Soviet defectors, communist defectors who ever defect to the West, General Ion Pachepa, who was the head of Romanian intelligence during communist times. And basically it was the little sister of the KGB, if you will. He revealed in a book that he wrote after he defected to the West, it was called Disinformation, that the communist world, the Soviets and the allied satellite states had this plan to further inflame and further radicalize the Islamic world and use Muslims as kind of a battering ram against the West, against Israel and against the United States. And so Pachepa in his book describes, he actually quotes Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB at the time. He says they had this plan to send thousands of communist agents all across the Middle East and use them to inflame the passions and the hatred of Muslims against Americans and against Israelis.

Now that would be bad enough in and of itself. Then you compound that problem with the US government pouring fuel on this fire. How many billions of dollars has the US government spent on fueling this conflict? Joe Biden and the Biden administration recently unleashed billions of additional dollars to the mullahs in Iran. They've been funding these Palestinian so-called governments for a very long time, Palestinian so-called governments that are building rockets, that are putting out hate propaganda. Of course, they've also been funding these UN agencies that are operating across these Arab areas surrounding Israel, where they're actually producing textbooks and they've been exposed over and over and over and over again doing this. They're producing textbooks that teach little tiny Arab children that Jews are apes and pigs and they have to be driven off into the sea and all the rest of it.

So there are very powerful forces that have an interest in perpetuating this conflict and those are not going to go away. Now I don't mean by any stretch of the imagination to downplay Islamic theology in this issue. If you read the Islamic scriptures, these are some of the things that Mohammed, the founder of Islam, did. He waged war on infidels. He massacred Jews. He massacred Christians.

Him and his armies went through North Africa, beheaded those who would not convert. So this is a problem that's been going on for 1,500 years. It's just a more recent manifestation of it. But what we see here in addition to this effort to get a global conflagration out of this is an effort to delegitimize the Western world, delegitimize the Jews, delegitimize the state of Israel, and ultimately out of this hatred, out of this conflict, to further advance these nefarious objectives of a one-world system. And you see so clearly in this conflict what analysts have described as the red-green axis, where you have socialists and communists on one side, allied with radical Islamists on the other. And I'll throw one more thing out there, David, and I think this will make a lot of Americans uncomfortable, but it's a well-documented fact. The US government has also done some of the things that I just described that the Soviets were doing in terms of radicalizing Muslims and pouring jet fuel, really, on the existing prejudices and things that already existed within Islam, within a lot of these communities. We saw it back in the 1980s in Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton, incidentally, testified to this fact in Congress, and we saw it more recently. We saw it when the Obama administration partnered with radical jihadists across Syria, with radical jihadists across Libya, for the purpose of overthrowing well-established governments that, incidentally, had previously been allied to the United States. So there is so much going on behind the scenes here that Americans are not getting from the media, but that's really critical for people who actually want to understand what's going on here.

Okay, we're going to pause the interview there with Alex Newman for today, but next week we'll have part two of this conversation. So just to summarize a few key points from today. What leads to the decline and collapse of an empire? Well, Alex mentioned a decline in morality, basically a rejection of God's wisdom for things like marriage and family and sexuality.

We see that rampant in our country today. Objective truth is thrown out. Everything is relative. But God's laws are like the laws of physics.

You break them at your own peril. The second thing he mentioned is government spending, whether through endless wars, which are incredibly expensive and also profitable, by the way, but also endless entitlement expenditures. That drags down a nation, an empire.

The third thing he mentioned is internal subversion. People are attracted to the wealth and power of a nation like ours. It attracts evil people who are greedy and have ambition or just want to hate the country because of its success and are treasonous against it. Then he mentioned that ultimately God is the one who determines when nations rise and fall. Read Isaiah chapter 40 or Romans 1.

God is the determiner of all of life and history. And ultimately, the non-believing, Satan-led world cannot and will not tolerate anything that represents or gives glory to God. So any nation like ours that has any vestiges of God's truth must be toppled and replaced with man ruling according to his own laws and immorality. Remember what President Obama said before he was elected?

We're going to fundamentally transform the United States of America. What we once were that glorified God, that needs to be fundamentally transformed. And number two, the Satan-led world cannot and will not tolerate a nation chosen by God, Israel, through whom the Messiah was sent and which has future blessing.

That nation must be destroyed as well. It's really Psalm 2. Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together.

And notice who it's against. Against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us. The non-believing, God-rejecting, Satan-led world sees the laws of God as shackles around them. They want autonomy from the accountability of God.

They want to get out from under his authority. And I think a big lesson here for Americans is, even with the best constitution and laws, ones that are based largely on God's Word, sinful men will do anything and everything to get out from under God's authority. I think that is one of the things that God is teaching us. Only when Christ rules will it be a society, a nation, a world which is sustainable.

In our nation, over the last 60 years or so, the objective truth of God is being jettisoned for the relative truth of man. So you can be whatever sex you want to be. It's not right or wrong. You can have sex with whoever you want. It's not right or wrong. You can hate this country's values.

No problem. Come on in and be a part of us. Diversity is our strength, we're told. Relativism sees our nation as not to be preferred over any other nation. There are those in our own country who would look at Cuba when it was led by Fidel Castro, a communist, and say, oh, they have wonderful education. They have health care.

They have health care for all. We're not better than they are, we're just different. That is the worldview of multiculturalism, where a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.

All are equal value. And so in the midst of this decline in America, or perhaps its rise to lead Babylon the Great we see in Revelation, whether it's losing the liberties we have, the property under persecution for being Christians, we are called to not fear, but have peace. We must not be shaken.

We must have peace in the midst of this. Listen to what Jesus told the disciples on the evening of his resurrection. Now consider the emotional and mental state they were in. They were confused, scared, everything they had believed in. Jesus the Messiah had been crucified.

They were thinking they were next to die. But here's what it says in John chapter 20. So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week when Christ rose from the dead, and when the doors were shut, where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, peace be with you.

And when he had said this, he showed them both his hands and his side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. So Jesus said to them again, peace be with be with you.

As the Father has sent me, I also send you. And then there's the account of Thomas not being there. And they tell them, we've seen the Lord, and Thomas doesn't believe. Skipping down to verse 26, after eight days, his disciples were again inside, and Thomas this time was with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, now a third time, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, reach here with your finger and see my hands, and reach here your hand to put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believing.

And Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God. Jesus says peace to them three times. He reassures them in the midst of having very troubled hearts about the situation that's going on around them. Peace is a steadiness. It's a calmness.

It's a trust. It's opposite of fear and anxiety. And it's not a psychological trick. This peace comes from two things. First, it comes from being at peace with God. Romans 5 says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand. If you have peace with God, in other words, if you are born again, the worst thing that can happen to you is the entrance to the best thing that can happen to you. You are ushered into the presence of God.

Even if you lose your life, if you lose everything you have, I know that's hard to even consider, a glorious eternity awaits the believer in heaven. So how to be at peace with God? Well, Jesus told us how. He said, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus says, how can a man be born when he is old?

Jesus answered, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again. You must be born again. Not you should consider being born again, but you must. This is an imperative.

It's a command. Being born again means you must obey Christ's command to repent of your sins and believe in his work on your behalf for your salvation. That's how you can have peace with God, because the non-believer is at war with God. So put your faith in Christ's life, death, and resurrection, and receive peace with God. And once you're at peace with God, then you can have the peace of God.

This means God transforms your outlook, your perspective, your worldview. He gives you peace because you know and trust what he has promised. You know and trust he will bring it to pass. You know and trust he is in control. You know and trust he wins in the end.

And you know and trust he is working all things for his glory. So you look at the chaos in the world and you, as a born again believer, have the peace of God. Knowing what Jesus said in John 14, peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.

We are out of time, but we have much more coming up next week. Thank you for joining us today on the Christian worldview. Be born again and be at peace with God, and by faith have the peace of God.

Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of the Christian worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out what must I do to be saved, go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian worldview is a listener-supported non-profit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, become a Christian worldview partner, order resources, subscribe to our free newsletter, or contact us, visit thechristianworldview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. That's Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Thanks for listening to the Christian worldview.