A darkness has come upon the world.
It is an ancient darkness, and yet new in its manifesting. It is permeating our media, our entertainments, our marketplaces, our schools, our corporations, our public squares, our governments, our cultures, our lives. It is setting in motion the transformation of our society, the overturning of ancient foundations, and the destroying of age-old standards of morality, values, perception and faith.
It is an unrelenting darkness, one that seeks not only to exist and grow, but to exercise total dominion, to force all it touches into submission, to subjugate language, to alter perception and to bend reality into its image. It is a darkness that requires every tongue to confess its name and every knee to bow down in its homage. As for those who would defy or resist its conquest, it seeks to assimilate and transform them or else destroy them, even to destroy their will to resist it.
So it was in the days of the man known in the Bible as Josiah. Josiah was born into a kingdom that had known God but had fallen from His ways. It had come into existence for the purposes of God but had detached itself from those purposes. It became a civilization turned in upon itself and against the foundation of which it stood, an inverted kingdom, a civilization in a state of spiritual schizophrenia. It still invoked His name but lived in opposition to His ways.
Such is the culture in which we now live. American civilization was founded on the reality of God and established for its purposes. But, as with ancient Israel, it has fallen and now exists in a state of spiritual schizophrenia—as does its parent, Western civilization.
As Western civilization has turned away from God and monotheism, in its place has risen a form of revived paganism. We see in its deification of the material world, its desanctification of life, its religious syncretism, its moral relativism, its sexualization of popular culture, its abuse of life, its worship of images and its overturning of biblical standards, values, and precepts. All these things were hallmarks of the ancient paganism of the Middle East.
But Josiah was unique. He didn’t accept what most of his generation accepted. He did not go along with the status quo, the majority, the tradition of his fathers, or the prevailing norms of his culture. As it was in the days of Manasseh, those who upheld the ways of God became the enemies of state and culture. They would be deplatformed, demonetized, blacklisted, denied admission, expelled, fired, boycotted, banned, silenced, prosecuted, persecuted, canceled, eliminated.
Josiah knew he was living in an age of darkness and in a culture given to evil. But, instead of accepting the dark and evil in the civilization in which he was born, he set himself against it. He would not go along with it; he would resist; he would fight against it. {eoa}
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He is known for opening the deep mysteries of Scripture and bringing forth messages of prophetic import. He was named, along with Billy Graham, as one of the top forty spiritual leaders of the last forty years who radically changed our world. Called the prophetic voice of this generation, Cahn is a much-sought-after speaker and has been highlighted in the New York Times as well as in many national and international media. He has spoken at the United Nations, on Capitol Hill, and to millions of people around the world. He leads Hope of the World, an international outreach of the Word, teachings, and compassion projects for the needy around the world. He also leads the Jerusalem Center/Beth Israel, made up of people of all backgrounds, just outside New York City, in Wayne, New Jersey.
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