Leadership vacuum causing distress

On September 4th, I posted the following essay:
Ayatollah Durrani's call for Obama to be Caliph has enormous end time implications in Christianity AND Islam

7/2008 cover of the New Yorker
That post generated a HUGE amount of internet traffic. It was repeated and posted and discussed in many places. It got over 1000 page views the next day after I posted it (after it'd propagated) and it's still getting huge traffic to date. I think the Obama as Caliph post clearly shows the extreme uneasiness of the American populace in terms of current leadership. Any culture needs and craves good leadership, a steady hand, and comfort that our representatives are truly representing us. When our leaders don't, we get uneasy. Usually, an election takes care of the problem, as it did after the horrendous presidency of James Buchanan, generally acknowledged to be our worst President ever. (Sorry Bush haters...)

But the current uneasiness has an added tinge to it these days: panic. This is because the problems facing us are out of the norm, outsized, and seemingly insurmountable no matter how many Czars and funds and strategies we throw at it. This uneasiness tinged with panic is repeated the world over. The problems are simply getting bigger and more frequent. And no one is solving them.

I also think the root of the uneasiness about Obama as Muslim is the intuitive understanding at the soul-level Islam is of the devil and that it will likely be a major segment of the coming one-world religion. It's all part of the end time.

The end time is technically the time between Jesus' ascension and the Second Coming. However, He said that the signs of the end of the age would be as birth pangs: "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains." (Mark 13:8). The character and nature of birth pangs are that they begin with a watershed moment (pun intended) and continue in rising frequency and intensity until they are so frequent and intense that they harbinger the event's imminence.

The world's problems are mounting in frequency and intensity. Earthquakes are on the rise. Drought is common. Crop failures are intense. Romania is so broke that they put forth a bill to tax fortune tellers and witches, just about the last 'professions' not to be taxed for their revenue. Leaders are out of ideas and the popularity of the American Tea Party is evident that we sure do notice the dearth of political innovation, or even competence.

As much as rallies satisfy for the moment, they do not suffice for true, steady leadership over time. Americans, and everyone else (except perhaps Germany) is craving it. We are not getting that craving satisfied, and it is making the world nervous. Crop after crop of leaders arise, only to disappoint. None of them have a clue as to how to solve the devastating problems facing us today.

That Obama's origins are murky at best makes us even more nervous. An Associated Press article from today headlines the moment: "Unsettled nation marks 9/11 with rituals of sorrow (AP)" Unsettled is correct. We are unsettled not only because our leaders are failing us but we do not really even know who our top leader IS. Is he Muslim? Christian? Kenyan? Indonesian? Hawaiian? White? Black? Obama even calls himself a mutt. A mutt is an animal or a plant resulting from various interbreedings, especially a dog of mixed or undetermined breed. We are being "led" by a  man of undetermined origins who stands for unexplained philosophies in a time of uncertain future. Unsettled isn't the half of it.

Then the rapture will come. Suddenly, things will tip even more to the panic side of global turmoil. A terrorized populace will ask, scream, demand to know Where did they go? Why? Who took them? The weakened economy perhaps will not be able to stand the vacuum created by millions of vibrant and contributing Christians. The problems will get worse.

This uneasiness of the present day will translate into sheer panic after the rapture and will be one of the emotional foundation blocks that will be the path for allowing the Antichrist to arise. There will be a leadership vacuum of problematic proportions. There will be rampant panic to quell, and clamor for a steady, sure hand at the helm. The antichrist will fill the bill.

In the bible he is referred to by many names, such as Son of Perdition and Man of Lawlessness, and most often simply "The Beast". He will be boastful, full of intrigue, win by craft and put forth dark sentences. He will be fierce, blasphemous and seemingly come in peace. By the time the leadership vacuum is at its fullest, none of the above will matter. The world will want somebody, anybody. The fact that Ayatollah Durrani was willing to settle for Obama as the Muslims' Supreme Religious Leader (Caliph) is indicative of the yearning on the Muslims' side of the world for someone to fill the leadership gaps spiritually as well as politically.

Part of the end time is not only the quantifiable and observable news that we read each day and match to the scriptures. Though it seems that some days the newspaper reports are ripped from the pages of the bible, it is also the spiritual and emotional feelings generated by the global events that are also part of the complex make-up of this unique time. That the "Obama as Caliph" post generated such buzz is indicative, I believe, of the unsettling emotional season upon which we are embarking. There is a children's book by PD Eastman called "Are You My Mother?" in which a baby bird falls out of the nest, and unable to fly, walks all around repeatedly asking every animal he meets, "Are you my mother? Are You My Mother? Are You My Mother?" That book is like the world after the rapture and just before the antichrist. They will search and search, their tired legs carrying them to and fro, asking each potential candidate, Are you our leader? Are you the one? And finally the world will finally settle contentedly under the sheltering wing of the one who says, "Yes, I am the one." He will be false, and he will wreak havoc on the world, and all because of lack of discernment of true leadership of the Holy Christ who has already come. Jesus said this will be so: "I have come in my Father's name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him." (John 5:43)

Nature abhors a vacuum. It is an idiom used to express the idea that empty or unfilled spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature and physics. Humans abhor a leadership vacuum, and our hearts abhor a spiritual vacuum. The antichrist's empty promises and false words will fill the vacuum created by the lack of leadership now and the coming days. Don't fall for it. Empty words are no substitute for ...


the real leadership of King JESUS CHRIST.

Comments

  1. It does seem as though a shoe has to drop. I wonder if that shoe is the rapture..if so, we are so close.

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