Spiritual Mergers and Acquisitions That Will Lead To the Great Harlot of Revelation 17:1

By Brannon S. Howse

The reason Revelation 17:1 refers to the global false church as the “great harlot” is that it will hold tremendous power over the world for a time. That’s how religion can become the foundation or vehicle to bring about the one-world economy, the one-world government, and the reign of the Antichrist in the Reich. I believe there is already a clear-cut plan in the works to bring this about and will explain the eight points of the plan later in this chapter. First, though, I need to tell you about the overarching methodology which will be used to implement the specific steps of the plan. 

Spiritual Mergers and Acquisitions

The Coming Religious Reich is the last in my three-book series about ungodly influences that are changing the world as we know it—particularly in America and the West. In the first two books—Grave Influence and Religious Trojan Horse—I explain in detail a crucial technique used throughout the world by those who want to bring about radical change without people generally recognizing what is happening. Most notably articulated by early nineteenth-century philosopher—and darling of Karl Marx and other leading Communists—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the “Hegelian dialectic process” is the critical tool for one-world development. The essential concept is that social manipulators create a thesis and an antithesis—opposing ideas—which cannot be resolved apart from some sort of compromise or blending of the disparate approaches. Karl Marx mastered the technique, and many others have used it to accomplish usually socialist goals within economics, religion, and politics. The conjoining of thesis and antithesis yields a “third way.”

Applying the Hegelian dialectic to religion allows the merging of Christianity and New Age beliefs in order for leaders to acquire followers of the pluralistic “new religion.” Cults also do this all the time. In politics, socialism can be merged with capitalism to create corporate fascism or corporatism. Like the pagan gods and goddesses of history, Hegelianism flies under different names in different situations. Fabian socialism and communitarianism, for instance, are simply other brands of Hegelianism. Whatever the name, though, they always move the worldview ball down the field—to the left.

As Christians, we should be particularly concerned about the immediate impact this has on Christ followers as well as the eternal destinies of those who have yet to come to Him in repentance and faith. Unbiblical ideas abound that people without a thoroughly biblical worldview too easily accept as they are merged into Christianity. Not that this syncretism leaves us with a true biblical faith, of course, but it’s amazing the degree to which ideas that were once thought incompatible with Christianity are now so comfortably accepted by so many. One of the most alarming merging of New Age thinking with Christianity is the Word of Faith movement and its sibling movements, name-it-and-claim-it, and “positive confession.” The resulting hybrid Christianity is simply a false gospel.  The Christian community in many places also embraces social justice, a merging of socialism with Christianity, to give us yet another false gospel. 

Whether wittingly or not, a range of influential evangelicals have picked up on the dialectical approach. A 2009 book by Jim Belcher, now the president of Providence Christian College in Pasadena, California, announces the premise in the title: Deep Church—A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional. Evidently, neither the Emergent Church nor the traditional church has it right, so a third option is needed. Belcher maintains that traditional evangelicals and the EC with its amalgamation of mysticism, New Age thinking, and socialist leanings need to see what’s good in each other’s beliefs and merge them into a better new idea.

A group that calls itself the Third Way and includes prominent evangelicals such as Samuel Rodriguez issued a report titled “Third Way: Progressives and Evangelicals Coming Together for Shared Values,” and again the title is stunning. “Progressives” means socialists. But how can socialists legitimately merge with evangelicals? If evangelicals are to remain true to the Bible, obviously they can’t. Yet the Hegelian opposites make the merger sound like the only reasonable and caring solution to differences. 

This kind of theological shenanigans is going on all across the spectrum of evangelicalism. Some are Word of Faith. Some would call themselves Reformed. Others would say they’re charismatic. Some would be Calvinists. Others are Armenian. There would be Southern Baptist and Lutherans, Presbyterians and Assemblies of God. Within all of the categories people are buying into social justice, mysticism, and ecumenicalism—the perfect blend of thinking through which all the world’s religions can “come together.” 

These disparate groups are united in their “third way” thinking as well as in their eschatology, or end-time beliefs. Theologically speaking, most of them are postmillennialists who believe they have to build the kingdom of God on earth. While this is clearly not the traditional view of Christians throughout the history of the Church, it is the de facto belief of these “reconstructionists.” Once all nations have been “Christianized,” the kingdom of God will be established, and Christ will return. Nowhere, though, does the New Testament call us to build a physical, literal kingdom on earth. No, Scripture teaches that God will bring His kingdom; we don’t make it happen. We build it in the spiritual realm as we preach the Gospel, but we don’t build it in a tangible manner here on earth. God is the One who will eventually bring His kingdom physically to earth. When He does, He will crush Satan’s kingdom, and God’s will last forever. Meanwhile, these people, united as they are in a postmillennialist worldview, focus on social justice, mysticism, moralizing, politicalizing, the culture war, ecumenicalism, and reshaping the Church. And that’s where the eight-step plan toward one-worldism swings into action.

Copyright 2015 ©Brannon Howse. This content is for Situation Room members and is not to be duplicated in any form or uploaded to other websites without the express written permission of Brannon Howse or his legally authorized representative.