The Darkness of the Enlightenment
19 Dec 2006
The socialist idea that man is innately good and perfectly capable of determining for himself what is good and evil is the same old lie that the serpent told Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:1-6). Likewise, the belief that an inherently good humanity can create utopia on earth can also be traced back to ancient times, all the way back to the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9). Yet, the socialist notion that God ordained institutions are not essential to man’s survival on this planet, but only encumbrances to him reaching his full potential and ushering in worldwide utopia, is as young as the Age of Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment has been properly characterized as a re-picking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was not only a full-fledged revolt against Christianity, but also a movement that attempted to bring about a new social order by crowning human reason and casting off divine revelation—the Bible. In other words, the Enlightenment called upon man to begin living by his wits and to stop living by God’s Word.
Like the Renaissance and Reformation that preceded it, the Enlightenment was incited by the Dark Ages. Having suffered under the tyranny of Roman Catholicism for centuries, the world was primed to cast-off the oppressive yoke of religion. Thus, beginning around the middle of the 17th century and continuing until the late 18th century, Enlightenment thinkers, like the famous French atheist Voltaire, called upon their fellowmen to replace religion with reason. According to Voltaire, man had no hope of a bright and glorious future unless he once and for all disavowed God and deified himself.
Please, permit me to pause at this juncture and make a salient point. Nothing has proven more detrimental to the true church of Christ over the years than the false impression of Christianity presented to our world by the whorish Church of Rome. Believing Catholicism to be synonymous with Christianity (e.g. the world still considers the Pope to be the leader of all Christendom) the world lays every crime perpetrated by Roman Catholicism at the feet of Christianity. Whether it is the atrocities committed by the Crusaders or the abomination of the Spanish Inquisition, the world chalks up to the bride of Christ every crime committed by the “great whore” who sits on Rome’s “seven hills” (Revelation 17:1-9). Consequently, all of today’s ill-conceived alliances between evangelicals and Catholics only serve to perpetuate the ruse that Christianity and Catholicism are one and the same.
Although credited with being “the Father of the Enlightenment,” Voltaire’s influence over our modern-world is minimal at best; after all, his ideas have long since been discredited and his house and press were being used shortly after his death to produce Bibles, the very book he had dedicated his life to destroying. There are other Enlightenment figures, however, who, unlike Voltaire, cast long shadows over today’s world. Of these, one stands out in particular.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a Swiss-born philosopher who argued a thesis unheard of before his time; namely, that civilization had proven detrimental to the human race. Contrary to all philosophers before him, Rousseau argued that the noblest of men were not the civilized, but the savages. According to Rousseau, man in is natural state is intuitively good, loving, virtuous and selfless; however, evil civilization, with its traditional institutions and artificial rules and conventions, has made man competitive, envious, hypocritical and selfish. Therefore, all man needs to do in order to follow his good nature to a paradisiacal world is free himself from the bondage of civilization.
In order to overthrown repressive civilization, Rousseau advocated revolution. As a result, he gave rise to the most violent revolutionaries of all time. Whether we’re speaking of Robespierre, Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, or even Pol Pot, all of them were inspired to one degree or another by the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Furthermore, Rousseau’s philosophy of the “Noble Savage”—his denial of original sin, insistence upon man’s innate goodness, and beliefs in the perfectibility of man and the possibility of utopia on earth—is at the heart of many a modern-day ism; such as, liberalism and socialism.
Although Rousseau advocated the overthrow of civilization, along with its three God ordained institutions—the government, the church, and the home—he believed that once overthrown the government should be replaced with a totalitarian state. Unlike traditional governments which are designed to restrain evil by keeping men within the confines of civilization, Rousseau envisioned a totalitarian state that would free men from all moral restraints by removing civilization’s restrictive boundaries. This proposed libertine government would serve as the great liberator of mankind, or as Rousseau put it himself: “The agency of emancipation that permits the individual to develop the latent germs of goodness heretofore frustrated by a hostile society.”
Though history has repeatedly proven totalitarian states to be the personification of evil, Rousseau insisted that the totalitarian state would be good. If all men are good, as Rousseau believed, then how could the state, which Rousseau saw as nothing more than the merger of individual wills into a “General Will,” not be good as well? Once men were beholden to the benevolent state for the freedom to reach their full potential by doing as they please, Rousseau assumed that utopia on earth would be easily perpetuated by grateful men gladly pledging their allegiance to a totalitarian state safeguarding men’s natural propensity for good and ongoing potential to create a paradisiacal world.
Contrary to the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and modern-day liberals and socialists, the Bible teaches that traditional institutions like the government, the home, and the church are necessary to keep fallen man in check. Without these God ordained restraints, evil would grow to monstrous proportions rendering this sin-cursed world totally uninhabitable. Rather than monstrous evils encumbering worldwide utopia, as foolhardy socialists believe, these God ordained institutions are essential to the continuing survival of fallen humanity on this planet, as any Bible-believing Christian knows.
In light of this, I believe that Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:21-22—“For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there shall no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.”—add fonder to the fire of my contention that socialism is the Biblically predicted tyranny of the end time. Ultimately destined to accomplish its long sought after goal of removing all moral restraint from this world, socialism will usher in, much to the socialist’s chagrin, hell on earth rather than heaven on earth. Far from creating an earthly utopia, socialism will hasten Christ’s return to the earth, lest no earthly inhabitant be left alive.
Rousseau’s philosophy and socialists’ belief that government should never restrain man from doing as he pleases, but only silence those who suggest otherwise, turns government into a most fearsome beast (see: Revelation 13). By denying government its God ordained role; namely, the restraining of evil (Romans 13:1-7), socialism aims to return our fallen world to its frightening prediluvian condition. According to Genesis 6:5 and 6:11, “the earth was filled with violence” and “every imagination [and] thought of [man’s] heart was only evil continually” before the Noahic Covenant and God’s instituting of government within it as a restraint to murder and all other evils in this world (Genesis 9:1-6).
Christ Himself chillingly predicted that as it was in “the days before the flood” and in “the days of Noah…so shall [it] also [be at] the coming of the Son of man” (Matthew 24:37-39). What other explanation is there for an end time scenario that resembles the unrestrained evil of prediluvian times than the conquest of socialism? With its long awaited overthrow of God ordained institutions and removal of all moral restraints, socialism will not only pave the way for the “man of sin” to come (2 Thessalonians 2:3-12), but also unleash upon our world unprecedented evil. So much so that God will once again be “grieved” over His creation of man and come in His fierce anger to judge the whole earth, sparing only those like Noah of old who have “found grace in the eyes of the Lord” and entered by faith into God’s Ark of Safety—Jesus Christ (Genesis 6:6-8).
Don Walton
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