In a past Discerning the Times, we exposed how Satan is using the legislation of such actions at the HR 5, the Equality Act, to implement the legal structures for suppressing our freedoms and persecuting the church of Jesus Christ.
HR 5 is just one thrust in a barrage of actions advancing legal, social, academic, and commercial agendas contrary to biblical faith and the Judeo-Christian values upon which the United States and other Western nations were founded. We must continue to get to the roots of these movements if we as intercessors are to know how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in not just defeating the demonic strongholds but in advancing the Kingdom of God.
Antichrist Ideologies
Many others have been exposing the antichrist ideologies that provide the basis of the powerful demonic strongholds in these ideological movements.1 After the demonic invasion that I believe took place during and after the 2020 US election, these strongholds are growing and exerting more influence in the government, society, and the church.
We are called to continue to expose and work with Jesus to overcome these strongholds; however, I believe the Holy Spirit is calling us to continue to expose the deep roots of the “ground” that opens the doors to all these totalitarian antichrist movements.
Cult of Well-Being
In this Discerning the Times, I continue the interview with Steve Aceto, General Counsel for PRMI, in which we analyze HR 5 but then expose its deep roots first in the “cult of Well-being.” Secondly, we draw disturbing parallels between HR 5, the Equality Act, and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 in Germany, which like HR5, redefines marriage and establishes the legal basis for excluding and finally eliminating certain classes of people from society.
Frankly, we delve into some deep theological and spiritual issues that are not obvious to the casual observer. So, listen carefully to what Stave says as he explores what is really behind this bill and other such actions. In the video of the interview with Steve, the first few minutes describe the legal implications of HR 5, which were already given in the other DTT, but then the video details issues of the Cult of Well-Being as the deep demonic root.
The points made in the video are complex. What follows is an elaboration on the key points made by Steve.
Exposing the “Cult of Well-Being” an Interview with Steve Aceto
Brad – I have been working on exposing the antichrist ideologies based on Marxism which seem to be at some level the prevailing ideology driving the recent legislative actions of the House of Representatives in the HR 5 the Equality Act. All of which seems to be pushing the nation toward socialism. This is profoundly subtle, as are most of Satan’s schemes. Help me see what I am missing.
Steve – I’m not quite ready to go the whole hog with the socialist revolution thing in this DTT or elsewhere. There is a lot more going on that deserves a focus of discernment. What say you? I am not convinced that the Marxist influence ought to be the focus of intercession, but as you point out, this thing is subtle. It will not quite fit on a bumper sticker, though we need to come up with one.
Defining the Cult of Well-Being
Brad – I agree with you on this point that we must look beyond the surface – which is the Marxist Radical Left influence. I believe this needs to be named. However, I think you are right to point to the true deeper causes of what has opened the door in our society and the Church to this antichrist ideology making it such a useful tool for Satan to oppose God’s Kingdom in this epoch. You have pointed out this idea that the “Cult of Well-Being” is the deeper root or gateway to all antichrist totalitarian ideologies that are besetting our times. So, what is the “Cult of Well-Being?”
Steve – “Well-Being” is a core social reality of our times in which no one can criticize, contradict, or obstruct without risk of cancellation. Well-Being was identified in the 1960s as a historical movement or social trend by the Italian philosopher Augusto del Noce 2, who defined it as:
- A commercially and technologically affluent society,
- With no objective standards of behavior,
- Whose main goal is to satisfy physical appetites.
The “Cult of Well-Being” makes the individual a Caesar Augustus of self-determined identity, destiny, and entitlement. The individual becomes the senior deity in a pantheon of idols of culture, politics, and science.
The soul-searching question before us as Christians ought to be, “Do we continue to live with such lies, or do we head uphill the other way?” We are in desperate need of the manifest move of the Holy Spirit, in whom we rejoice because He delights to show sinners His way.
The practical political implications of the “Cult of Well-Being.”
Brad – Please explain more about the practical political implications of the “Cult of Well-Being.”
Steve – Well-Being, as a legal expression of a social trend, is expressed in the SCOTUS decision in Obergefell, creating a legal right to same-sex marriage, among other things yet to be understood, by making “injury to individual dignity” a legally actionable harm.3 HR 5, the Equality Act continues the same legal, cultural and spiritual trajectory of unrestrained self-determination.
What is going on is a diabolical substitution of authority. For example, the authority that biblical and most other traditional notions gave to the family unit of male husbands, female wives, and children as inviolable is substituted for the identities of convenience made enforceable by law.
Laws that favored and protected traditional family as a source of authority over itself are exchanged for laws that eliminate all authority except that which removes all other authorities.
In other words, under American law, there now is no legitimate restraint on self-determination. Unfortunately, most Americans instinctively agree with this, and public opinion is shifting accordingly.
There already are and soon may be many more “Equality” laws on the books, such as the redefinition of protected classes designated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include gender identity. These laws create new offenses for which newly offended persons may engage attorneys to enforce against anyone who offends them and make the offender pay the cost of prosecution.
Municipalities in the US, Canada, UK, and Western Europe have enacted such laws on pain of significant fines and other penalties.
The Long-Term Consequences of the Cult of Well-Being
Brad –Many Christians and the leadership of most mainline denominations in the UK, USA, and Canada have already been deceived into this cult of Well-Being by removing biblical doctrine on marriage and the sanctity of life to consent to gay rights and pro-choice movements. What are the long-term consequences of this accommodation?
Steve – Well-Being has seduced American Christians [and those in other nations as well]in ways that will assure our functional disappearance within a generation, without repentance and a movement of the Holy Spirit that captures both the soon-departing Baby Boomers and the incoming generations of Millennials.
In no particular order, first, we (I include myself as intellectually and spiritually complicit to all of this) have been caught by mistakenly identifying the right to religious freedom with the right to self-determination.
This false equation balances out until self-determination works its way opposite to a biblical understanding of humanity, which necessarily results in self-determination without limits becoming the law of the land, which is where the currently dominant narratives of law, commerce, and culture are going headlong.
Brad – Hold there! This point is HUGE! What I hear you are saying is that our “self -determination replaces the Judeo-Christian American roots that places our self-determination and freedoms under God’s orders of creation and sovereignty.
This represents entire societies giving in to Satan’s original temptation in the Garden of Eden to place themselves as equal to God [Genesis 3:3-4] and then building the social and legal structures to coerce all members of the society into compliance with this same sin and rebellion against God. The result, as God promised, will indeed be death, both spiritual and physical, for the individuals of that society!
A Modern Expression of the French Revolution
In short, this is a modern expression of the French Revolution that dethroned God and placed human reason and will on the throne of man’s heart and of his governance. Unless soon reversed by a great move of the Holy Spirit in which God is restored back on His throne in our hearts and our culture, our future will be mirroring the horrors of the other revolutions that dethroned God!
Steve – Second, American Christians have been seduced by the pursuit of Well-Being as a substitute for living in Christian community, even before the disruptions of Covid. American Christians have come to a tipping point where most are not actively part of a church community, seeing no personal benefit.
Replacing Judeo-Christian Roots
Brad – All of this sounds benign. Are we not just doing what the Constitution says is our inalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?” Are these not just expressions of our “self-determination?” But that is the lie! Satan’s big lie because this leads to evil because this approach replaces the Judeo-Christian roots of our nation and destroys our morals and values.
We think we have the freedom to do whatever we want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. And we do not! God is not relative. He is absolute, and we need to return to His roots, with His boundaries.
The Institution of Well-being in HR 5
Let’s go back to our starting point! Please explain why we should be alarmed at the institution of Well-being in HR 5 and similar legislation.
Steve – So, where are we going (and why are we in this handbasket)? There comes a point where Dodge City just can’t get along with more than one sheriff. Just as Christianity comes to naught by sleeping with the false friend of self-determination, the keepers of the currently dominant narrative mistakenly identify with the uninterrupted pursuit of Well-being, which falsely promises the outcome of a peaceful and verdant world.
Instead, the end of Well-Being is totalitarian because an imperial self requires unlimited room to maneuver. And that ultimately marginalizes all other selves by concentration of authority. It is the ironic and natural consequence of the exaltation of self-determination.
Brad – This is why we come back to the contemporary expressions of Marxism in “identity politics,” “Critical Race Theory,” and so forth, to deceive society and the church into the totalitarian, which is the inevitable result of the cult of Well-being.
Steve – Yes, but as Well-being runs its course to enthronement, “Anarcho-Marxism” may appear to be ascendant for a time. We live in a time of public and private struggle because the dialectic is a struggle ideology. The practitioners of its cult are masters at creating and manipulating struggles for their own advancement. But at its core, Marxism and its parent, dialectic materialism, demand subservience to a collective utopian movement, which is utterly intolerant of self-determination.
Del Noce observed that the Marxist cult is built upon contradictions and is doomed to fail before Well-being. However, the end result promises to be practically indistinguishable from Marxist totalitarianism.
Defeating Demonic Strongholds
Brad – We need to unpack this a little bit, especially for me, as I have spent a lot of time recently exposing the demonic stronghold based on the antichrist ideology of Marxism. First, I think we still must expose, name, and cooperate with Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to defeat these demonic strongholds.
While I can agree that the internal contradictions of Marxism ensure that it is doomed to fail, until it does, this antichrist ideology has already cost the lives of over a hundred million people in the last century. The death toll and the destruction of nations continues even today, with America next on the list.
However, what I see happening is that you are calling us to the deep root of the evil that goes back to the temptation in the Garden of Eden. The antichrist ideology of Marxism, Islam, the Occult, and more is just the fruit of that poisonous tree – original sin – which is trespassing God’s boundaries and exalting ourselves as gods. The demonic root, then, is the cult of Well-being, right?
Steve – Why are the cult of Well-being and the resulting actions such as HR 5 necessarily diabolical? Christians will recognize in its enforcement the marks of the antichrist spirit, which animated the Nazi movement in 1930s Germany.
In emerging legal, social, academic, and commercial realities, we see disturbing parallels to the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. These were a constellation of legal enactments and social movements that marginalized German Jews from public life and commerce.
Their essential elements were:
(1) requiring persons of Jewish origin to identify themselves publicly as objects of scorn;
(2) redefining legally recognized marriage to eliminate traditional and Biblical notions by prohibiting persons of Jewish origin from marrying others;
(3) prohibiting persons of Jewish origin from political office, academia, licensed professions, or state-regulated businesses,
(4) banning “offensive” books and publications; and,
(5) co-opting democratic institutions of voting and legislation.
The legal redefinition of marriage, equality laws, and “cancel culture,” which identifies and excludes from doing business, academics, or media anyone who dares to differ with gender self-identification and other expressions of progressive ideology, is emerging as a counterpart to the Nuremberg Laws; no one can buy or sell without the mark of the beast, the name of the beast, or the number of the beast. [Revelations 13:15-18]
The Mark of the Beast
Brad – So the mark of the beast is whether a person accommodates the “woke” vision of reality, correct? Concerning the parallels to the Nuremberg Laws and the legal enforcement of the cult of Well-being, the misnamed Equality Act HR 5 opens the door to a return to the Jim Crow laws, which the Civil Rights movement based on Biblical justice led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. did overcome.
Except this time, it is not based on race as in Jim Crow and Nuremberg but on issues of gender and sexuality. Looking at how both laws were so accepted by many voices in the church in those past eras, what hope is there today?
Steve – As in Germany with the Nazi cult and Eastern Europe, China, and many other nations with the Marxist cult, no opposition is likely to emerge to counter the Well-being cult before it is too late, absent an awakening from the Holy Spirit which radically changes the narrative.
In Germany, much of the church slept through a deadly season of spiritual and political compromise and accommodation, contributing to the Holocaust. Ironically, many conservatives in Germany and elsewhere said Nazism was a lesser evil than Marxism and conspired with one to get rid of the other. The result was a disaster!
Does anyone now alive reasonably believe they are smarter than a 1930’s German? Even worse for Americans, is it now not painfully obvious how the same antichrist spirit animated the “Jim Crow” laws against persons of African origin enacted at the turn of the last century in the United States. These laws supplied inspiration or at least comfort to the Nuremberg Laws? The American church mostly slept through that one too.
Brad – Thanks, Steve, this is most helpful. Do you have any words of hope?
Steve – Come Holy Spirit, welcome, welcome. Wake us, and lead us in the way we must go.
How is the Lord Calling the Church to be Witness to Jesus Christ and Advance the Kingdom of God in the Face of Such Growing Evil?
There is a role for Christians to engage in political activities to oppose the evil growing in government and society. Now is the time to engage in this battle to protect our liberties.
Otherwise, if this tyranny is allowed to be implemented, it will become less possible and much more costly to speak out. Once such evil gets entrenched in legal, political, and cultural systems, it becomes even more difficult, if not impossible, without drastic means and terrible cost to change it.
This represents entire societies giving into Satan’s original temptation in the Garden of Eden to place themselves as equal to God [Genesis 3:3-4] and then setting the social and legal structures to coerce all members of society into compliance with the same rebellion against God. The result, as God promised, indeed would be death, both spiritual and physical, for that society and its people!
The Lord may be calling many of you into such political work. At the same time, I believe the Lord is calling intercessors to rush to the ramparts for the urgent work of high-level intercession and spiritual warfare.
The Holy Spirit is calling us as intercessors in the role of Moses to provide the spiritual cover for those like Joshua who are in the Halls of Congress fighting to defeat this evil. But their work risks being to no avail if we do not do our part in the spiritual realm by working with Jesus Christ to defeat these demonic strongholds, the antichrist ideologies, and the high-level evil spirits behind them all.
Call to pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit!
The Call to Prayer
Will you join me in this call to prayer? Please pray:
“Lord, we ask you to so pour out the Holy Spirit that your presence will pierce the demonic cloaking hiding the true agenda of Satan hidden in HR 5 and at work in our government. . Expose the layers of deception and expose the deepest layer of deception in this cult of Well-being.”
“For members of the body of Messiah (Christ) to reveal to us those places where we have been deceived by this cult of Well-being and have sought to compromise in order not to lose our well-being.”
“We pray, Oh Lord, have mercy upon us by giving us a spirit of conviction which leads to personal and communal repentance.”
“We pray that each of us may be so knit together with you Jesus Christ that we will have more moral courage to speak and act to advance your Kingdom above all other kingdoms.”
“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us your body, that in these times Satan is so effectively dividing us into warring factions, and bring us into the unity together centered in you that you prayed for in your prayer in John 17.”
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
- I recommend the recent book by David Horowitz, The Enemy Within: How Totalitarian Movement is Destroying America, published by Regnery Publishing, A Division of Salem Media Group Washington D.C. Another is Cheryl K. Chumley’s book, Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise or America Will Fall by Humanix Books. There are many more!
- Augusto Del Noce was an Italian philosopher and political thinker. From Wikipedia:Born Aug 11, 1910 · Pistoia, Italy and Died Dec 30, 1989 · Rome, Italy AUGUSTO DEL NOCE ON THE “NEW TOTALITARIANISM” by Carlo Lancellotti 44.2_Lancellotti.pdf (communio-icr.com) This essay is a relatively accessible and relevant introduction to Del Noce’s thoughts. Also, another book by Augusto Del Noce that offers profound insights into the roots of past and present totalitarian ideologies is The Age of Secularization, translated by Carlo Lancellotti. McGill-Queen’s University Press 2017.
- Obergefell v. Hodges, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5–4) on June 26, 2015, that state bans on same-sex marriage and on recognizing same-sex marriages duly performed in other jurisdictions are unconstitutional under the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. https://www.britannica.com/event/Obergefell-v-Hodges
Sounds like we have to repent of the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny. It’s filtering down to the individuals thought process.
Thank you for this.
Knowing the political aspects of life in the USA are going down hill is one thing, knowing the likely consequences & how to work with Holy Spirit in the midst of it is another.
Having lived in Germany & visited Dacau (one of many concentration camps), hearing Germans speak of not realizing they could or should do something, your conversation is an urgent & necessary response. Praying.
1) Thank you for this POWERFUL and informative article about the evil agenda underlying the HR-5 “Equality Act” bill in Congress now. I read this several times, posted it on Facebook, and am sending it to other praying Christians.
2) Concerning this bill which the Senate has not passed yet, how can I stand in the gap with others? Is there a cohort? Thank you.
But there is no reason to be afraid.
The Lord will allow only so much rebellion from leaders and rulers whose plans are futile. Fear not: At some point, He will destroy all who reject the anointed King of Kings while they are “in the midst of all their activities.”
And “…what joy for all who take refuge in him!”
Psalm 2