Are crumbling democracies such as Afghanistan a sign that the time of democracies is ending in preparation for the Man of Lawlessness, the Antichrist?

READ TIME: 4 Minutes

The Fragility of Democracy

As Ronald Reagan stated in his California inaugural address, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.”

This is hard to conceptualize for citizens of democracies who have never known any other form of government. But size and longevity can give a false notion of permanence.

I venture to say that then-governor Reagan was being conservative in his statement. I’ll put it another way, “a democracy is only one crisis away from falling.”

We gasp at how the Afghan government fell so quickly. But America was propping it up. As described by a Saudi Arabian writer, the Afghans “never invested the required efforts to mend this regime and develop it.”

Twenty years of government development fell in a week.

National crises can forever change a democracy, even destroy it. To that end, government factions frequently use crises to consolidate power. As Winston Churchhill stated in WWII, “never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Churchill was communicating that politicians can use a crisis to forge alliances that may not otherwise be possible. Modern-day politicians use this to improve their position against political foes and gain power for their own interests. In doing so, democracies can become oligarchies and oligarchies can become autocracies.

Could this transition be destined to prepare the world for the Man of Lawlessness, the Antichrist?

The End of Democracies

It is common for forms of government in a given country to transition to other forms. The first historically documented republic, Athens, twice became an oligarchy (power consolidated with one group) during its 250 life. Another example is Rome, which started as an autocracy (power held by one person, such as a king), later become a republic, and eventually reverted back to autocracy.

Even world superpowers can fall. The Soviet Union is an example still fresh in the minds of most adults living today. Each of these changes occurred at the resolution of a crisis.

Much of the world is in crisis today. COVID-19, conflicts, racial tensions, religious tensions, droughts, floods, and locusts are some of the major crises affecting the world today. Are these crises affecting the state of democracies across the world?

Using Crises to Consolidate Power

From the U.S. through Central Europe and Central Asia, we are seeing incumbent governments and ruling parties corrupt governance procedures to consolidate and maintain power. These power grabs are centered around ideologies and facilitated by crises, both real and manufactured, with media support.

COVID-19 is such a crisis. We have seen countries across the world use the crisis to strip the people of democratic freedoms. According to a report by Freedom House, “Since the coronavirus outbreak began, the condition of democracy and human rights has grown worse in 80 countries. Governments have responded by engaging in abuses of power, silencing their critics, and weakening or shuttering important institutions …”

This conclusion was based on a survey of 398 journalists, civil society workers, activists, and other experts as well as research on 192 countries.

Here is a representative table showing abuses of freedom in ten countries, representing free, partly free, and not free countries.

Crises grant opportunities for power-hungry political factions to consolidate power. The crises open a window when the citizens of a democracy are willing to give up their freedoms for resolution. Once politicians gain power, they rarely relinquish that power.

As Reagan also stated, “[Freedom] is not ours by inheritance, it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”

A Crisis Model

Though fictional, the Star Wars saga illustrates how a leader can use a crisis to transform a republic into an autocracy. Lucas presents a realistic model because he based his plot on historical events and consulted historians to develop the story.

In this plot, the elected leader of the Republic, Palpatine, creates a crisis that culminates in civil war. To allow for the quick decision-making required to fight the war, the republic’s representatives grant him emergency powers. They give up certain liberties to resolve the crisis, believing that it is in their best interests to do so. But at the crisis’ resolution, instead of relinquishing his powers, Palpatine destroys his opposition (the Jedi) and declares an empire.

As George Lucas stated, “democracies aren’t overthrown; they’re given away.”

In a true modern-day example, we saw Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan use an attempted coup to consolidate power. Lawmakers granted him emergency powers to resolve the crisis and he proceeded to dismantle freedoms. He removed opposition, detaining any perceived dissenters against his rule, including thousands of journalists, educators, judges, police, and soldiers. Though the emergency powers expired, changes in laws effectively allowed Erdoğan to retain much of this increased authority. Today, Turkey looks more like an autocracy than a republic.

Some theorize that Erdoğan secretly orchestrated the coup (ala Chancellor Palpatine). Erdoğan’s insistence that self-exiled (Pennsylvania) Islamic scholar and thought-leader, Fethullah Gülen, was responsible for the coup, fueled such speculation.

Democracies in Transit

According to another report from Freedom House, “Attacks on democratic institutions are spreading faster than ever in Europe and Eurasia, and coalescing into a challenge to democracy itself.”

The report concluded that in 2020 “a total of 18 countries suffered declines in their democracy scores; only 6 countries’ scores improved, while 5 countries experienced no net change. This marked the 17th consecutive year of overall decline in Nations in Transit [report] …”

This chart shows the results of the report.

With democracies waning, are oligarchies and autocracies the wave of the future?

Is the World Heading Towards Oligarchies and Autocracies?

President Biden stated during a town hall meeting, “I talked to Xi Jinping [China’s president]… he truly believes that the 21st century will be determined by oligarchs… democracies cannot function in the 21st century. Because things are moving so rapidly,… that you can’t pull together a nation that is divided to get a consensus on acting quickly, so autocrats, autocracies. I had a long meeting with Putin… these guys are actually betting… on autocracies.”

As China invests/loans billions of dollars to Middle Eastern and African countries for infrastructure projects, it is exporting more than money and materials – it is exporting its political ideologies. China is promoting its Marxist oligarchical structure across the world. It holds annual summits and trains young politicians from countries such as Africa.

Xi said their system is new because it combines Marxist political party theories with China’s reality. He claims this structure unites all political parties and people without party affiliation toward a common goal. But the Communist Party treats any non-communist groups as merely “consultants” and grants them no power. In fact, China functions more like an autocracy under Xi, and like any autocrat, Xi may rule for life. In 2018, lawmakers overwhelmingly (99.8%) abolished presidential term limits.

Biden’s above quote makes me wonder if he is ignorant to the nature of the initiatives being pursued by his own party? There are currently several efforts being led by the Democratic Party to consolidate power. These include loosening voting laws, increasing their base of voters through open borders, and increasing voters’ financial dependence on the government with cash handouts.

At the same time, they are discouraging capitalism by extending moratoriums of rent payments to landlords, depleting the workforce by excessively offering unemployment payments, discouraging U.S. energy production, and forgiving student loans. The Democrat-controlled Congress plans to subsidize this spending with tax hikes and the inflationary printing of new money. I’m not intending to be partisan in these statements; however, these socialistic initiatives have the potential to weaken the U.S. republic.

The Rise of Lawlessness

In his final speech at the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin made a grave observation.

He stated “[this Government] may be a Blessing to the People if well-administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism [an autocracy] as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”

Franklin’s statement reads to me more like a prophecy than a proverb. Is our world reaching the age when it is too corrupt for democracies to function effectively?

In the U.S. alone, the government is ignoring immigration laws, supporting rioting, undermining the police, portraying criminals as oppressed victims, and releasing prisoners due to COVID. And to destroy the checks and balances of the three-branch government, the Democratic Party wants to stack the Supreme Court with justices sympathetic with their cause. This is lawlessness, and a deliberate effort to use the current crisis to remodel American society.

Lawlessness makes a democracy unmanageable and opens the path for an oligarchy or autocracy.

The cycle from autocracies to democracies to oligarchies and back again has been repeated many times in the past. But at the end of this age, this cycle will provide an opening for the Man of Lawlessness, the Antichrist, to rise to power.

But have hope. For as terrible as this time yet to come will be, it will be short-lived. And the autocratic rule by the evil Antichrist will be usurped by a righteous theocracy led by the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.

For related posts, see How China May Enable the Antichrist to Dominate the World

Sign up for Updates on New Posts (email not shared)

Email address:

Leave this field empty if you're human: