If you’re someone who follows the news, then you’re probably aware that the past couple months have been pretty eventful. Here are just a few highlights. The Ukraine Invasion by Russia; the US entering recession; the Biden Administration trying to get the definition of “recession” changed; news that millions of doses of the Covid vaccine were tainted; news that the FDA knew that the company producing tainted vaccines was a major risk; Elon Musk trying to buy twitter and twitter getting mad and then Elon Must trying to not buy twitter and twitter getting mad; Speaker Pelosi refusing to seat republican congressmen on the January 6 committee; The January 6 Investigation Extravaganza!!!; the overturning of Roe v Wade; the attempted assassination of Supreme Court justices; the fact that China might face economic collapse at any moment; Michael Burry, one of the guys who predicted the Housing Market Crash, shorting US Treasury Bonds and the market and looking to get out of US Dollars; Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan and the Chinese getting mad, because they wanted their Army and Navy to visit Taiwan first; Ghislaine Maxwell being convicted – ironically without her turning State’s evidence on who the rich and powerful pedophiles are; and of course Mar-a-Lago being raided by the FBI over some documents that the National Archives may or may not have.
There has been a lot to talk about, some of it good, most of it bad, and a bit of it disturbing, if not outright frightening. We’re in a state of upheaval and we’ve been in a state of upheaval for quite some time. And, frankly, I don’t think things are going to get better any time soon. Unfortunately, if you’re a one of those people who like peace and prosperity, neither of them look particularly promising in the near future. In fact, many of the public intellectuals who predicted events correctly, people like Dr. Berry or Peter Zeihan, they are predicting things are going to get bad – as in historically bad…as in mass starvation bad.
People are actively predicting the likelihood of World War III. And there are reasons why they are predicting WWIII; and there are things happening right now that Christians should know about. Christians should have a broad understanding of world events. Not because we’re all experts at geopolitics. Not because we’re movers and shakers and can change the outcome of major historical movements. The overwhelming majority of us aren’t. But it is wise to have some idea of what is likely to happen in the near to mid-range future so that we can attempt to prepare.
And more than that, there are major eschatological implications to what is going on right now. Because I have a very basic thesis, stemming from a fairly basic reading of world events and trends. Here’s my basic thesis: the world is approaching complete economic disaster and a third world war.
Now, let me clarify. I’m not a prophet, nor a prophet’s son. God is not telling me this. I have no special insight into anything. But what I have is the ability to read the news and to listen to very intelligent people and to attempt to see where everything is leading. Because, unlike men like Zeihan and Burry, I believe that History is moving towards a definite end. Zeihan is nearly a geographical determinist and Burry is an investment genius. They look at trends – not ends. As a Christian Pastor Theologian, I’m much more concerned with ends than trends. I know what the END is; the trends come and go. Jesus told us that there will be wars and rumors of wars. These are trends. But the END comes after the abomination of desolation stands in the Holy Place.
So, for a Christian, serious about eschatology and world events, there is really only one question that matters: what has to happen historically, for there to be an abomination of desolation standing in the Holy Place?
And the simple answer is: first there has to be a Holy Place. And there isn’t a Holy Place now. So, before the End can come there has to be a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem. So the question becomes, what kinds of trends have to happen to make a Temple in Jerusalem possible?
And that’s the $64,000 dollar question of Dispensationalism. Remember, for the Christian there are two kinds of historical phenomena that concern us: trends and ends. Trends are Wars and Rumors of Wars, they are kingdoms rising and falling, depressions and recessions, change, change, and ever more change, the nations foaming and frothing and roiling like the sea. Those are trends – and we live within historical trends, so it’s wise to know how to live and move and have our being in them. We ought to seek to be wise and understand the times.
But there are also ends; in other words, what is the world coming to? Well it’s coming to the Ends – the Kingdom of the World will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ and in the End the righteous will go to their end, the New Jerusalem, and the wicked will go to their end, the Lake of Fire.
So, here’s what I’m proposing. Over this and the next two episodes, I would like to do three things. First, I want to explain what the current trends are. Second, I want to explain how I believe we should live in the current trends. Third, I want to explain why these might be pointing to the End.
So, first, let’s talk about WHAT the trends are.
OK, so when analyzing world trends there are a couple nations and organizations that need to be identified. Just like at the beginning of a play, in the playbill you have the dramatis personae, we need to know the players. So, here are the important players: The United States; China; Russia; the European Union; the Quad Alliance; NATO; Saudi Arabia; Iran; Israel; and the soon-to-be debtor-states to China.
So now that we know who the players are, we need to consider what’s happening at a MACRO level, as in things that are 100-year trends. So, the first thing to notice is that urbanization and industrialization had a predictable side-effect. It devastated the fertility rates of women. Which means that all over the world, all the major players, except the United States, began a population collapse a long time ago. Americans avoided it because of the Baby-Boom and then the gigantic Millennial generation, and massive immigration, which allowed US population to stay at the 2.1% rate which allows our population to continue to grow.
But Europe, Russia, and China are all facing contracting populations. Those who are in the greatest danger are Russia and China. The population of Great Russians and Han Chinese is due for a collapse and China’s may be far more precipitous than Russia’s.
But this has implications. The implications for Russia mean that if Russia wants to secure its borders through buffer-states, which is what Russia has done from the time of the Tsars, through the USSR, and now under Putin – if they wish to go out conquering and to conquer, they need to do it now, as they won’t have the manpower resources to do it in 50 years.
China, similarly, has expansionist, imperial aspirations. China wants to be to world’s hegemon, they wish to replace the US as the Superpower and to replace the Yuan for the Dollar as the world reserve currency. But China, like Russia, has an aging, and soon to collapse population, that is exacerbated by the one-child policy which meant that many families aborted daughters so their one child could be a son. Unlike Victorian England or Kaiserian Prussia, China was vehemently anti-natalist. But now that China wants to begin colonizing the world, they realize that they have men of fighting age now, but they won’t in 30 years to 40 years and it will take a ludicrous amount of time to restore their population because they don’t have enough women with the inclination to reproduce. Some estimate that by 2100 their population could be cut down to 587 million, and that’s just on birthrates and demographics, that’s not including wars, famine, emigration, or any other causes of depopulation.
Europe has population problems of its own, but Europe is not expansionist and has had mass migration from Muslim countries, which have brought a lot of social problems, and Western Europe looks like while it may be taking the Muslim immigration problem seriously, it has no way to address its population shortage. Several generations of white-guilt being laid upon the backs of Western Europeans for Colonialism, the slave trade, and in Germany, the Holocaust, compounded with the atheism and antinationalist sentiments that existed after the two world wars means that Western Europeans had little economic, philosophical, patriotic, or religious incentivization to have babies.
But Europe doesn’t want to expand like Russia, or colonize, like China.
And so the stage is set. The US, Europe, and Australia, India, and Japan, are all allying to try to hem-in Russia and China. But Russia and China are on a ticking-time-bomb. They have a very serious time-horizon problem: they will not have the population necessary for expansionist wars if they wait too long. Moreover, while Russia is economically secure because of its oil and gas, China is not only dependent on foreign oil and gas, and foreign food imports, it also has a much more unstable economy, and its economic growth has been in serious danger for a long while.
So for China and Russia, it might be now or never. And anyone with half a brain in the West knows this.
On the economic front, the United States is extremely in debt with record inflation and with doubts as to how long the dollar can remain the world’s reserve currency. Inflation seems to be high, but perhaps plateaued. The problem is that if GDP doesn’t increase, companies can only hold cash for so long and eventually the hiring is going to turn into firing. Right now we have the inverse of 2008 – in ’08 it was the “jobless recovery”; now we have the “jobful downturn”; but that can’t continue forever without real growth in the economy.
Europe is also facing hard times as the aging populations are straining their social welfare systems, but most importantly in the short term, Europe’s energy dependence is hampering growth and Europe is looking like it’s contracting economically post-Covid, with many predicting rising poverty in the Eurozone.
Russia, incidentally, has plenty of money thanks to its oil and gas industry, and is hoping that rising ocean temperatures will open the arctic circle to heavy-shipping within a few decades and allow Russia to dominate Eurasian shipping.
But Russia’s neighbor to the south, China is in a very, very bad place. The Chinese housing bubble, alongside historic levels of fraud and Ponzi-schemes are threatening to completely implode the Chinese economy. This is on top of the enormous expenses China has incurred through their Belt and Road Initiative, also known as the “New Silk Road”. China has gotten mired in debt and what’s worse, pulled other countries into debt traps that essentially make ports and infrastructure part of a Chinese neocolonial network. However, all of Chinese debt, along with a slowing economy, and a complete lack of trust in Chinese banking means that an economic downturn is already happening and utter collapse is possible – and has only been avoided because runs on the bank don’t work because they banks refuse to pay out the money.
Which of course brings us militarily to politics by other means. China is expansionist. They have a few simple goals. 1, they want Taiwan. 2, they want to secure the Straight of Malacca so that in a shooting war with Taiwan the Quad Alliance can’t starve them by blocking the straight and cutting off their oil supplies. Gaining control of the Straight of Hormuz would also be a bonus. 3, They want total control of the South China Sea. 4, they want to control high seas trade so they can become the world’s number 1 economy and become the world’s superpower.
Russia’s goals are simpler. Russia is in a gigantic steppe – which means it’s easy to invade. The Tsars’ solution was to invade and conquer other regions to make them buffer states. But these buffers are also invadable so you have to constantly expand. Russia believes that control of Ukraine, and the Baltic – maybe Finland too, just b/c they hate the Finns, they might have enough breathing room so that the West will not be an existential threat. And like the situation under the Tsars the population of Great Russians is the problem Putin faces.
China and Russia believe that their survival depends on winning some conflicts, and these victories can’t wait forever. The West wants to delay conflict and allow demographics to destroy Russia and China – as well as the chaos that will ensue after the death of Putin and the last of the Soviet-trained elites, and the erratic and foolish behavior of Chairman Xi over time can only weaken the Chinese Communist Party.
Again, demographics, geography, sociology, economics, and personal-dynamics all seem to suggest a few things: 1, the age of globalism may be either ending or significantly slowing; 2, the end of globalism will mean worldwide economic downturns, up to and including major starvation events all over Africa and Asia; 3, the West wants to delay a shooting war as long as possible and allow the demographic collapse as well as the financial corruption and political rot inside of Russia and China to destroy them from within; 4, Russia and China both feel the time-sensitivity of all these things and is champing at the bit. Russia has already invaded Ukraine, and will not stop their unless they’re stopped. China is becoming hyper-aggressive towards Taiwan and has used fighting words against the US.
So these are the trends. And these aren’t just my takes. These are the takes of serious people who follow these events in detail. I’m just giving you a summary of what geopolitical strategists and thinkers are noticing both in the here and now and extrapolated out in trends. Does this mean WWIII is imminent? No, but it’s very likely that things will spill over from Ukraine into Taiwan, because there is, without a major unforeseeable change, a closing time-window for Russia and China to achieve their expansionist aims.
Does this mean that there is certainly going to be a worldwide depression and mass starvation? No, but it is almost beyond anyone’s comprehension that the economic collapses of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the banking and mortgage crisis in China will are not harbingers of a worldwide slowdown and serious pressure being put on world markets.
I’m not a prophet. And I don’t know the future. I’m just telling you what the trends are, so that we as Christians will know how we might be able to prepare and also, how world events fit into God’s description of History. Next week we’ll talk about how we can and should respond to and prepare for what is going on in the world.