NEW WORLD ORDER
PALM SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
LUKE 19:41-45
APRIL 12, 1992
The dream of Franklin Roosevelt was called The New Deal. The dream of Harry Truman was called the Fair Deal. The dream of Lyndon Johnson was called The Great Society, and John F Kennedy’s dream was called The New Frontier. The dream of George Bush is a larger dream. His dream is called the New World Order Time. Time and again, when addressing the Congress, the media, and the nation, President Bush has expressed his desire to see a new world order. Many people across this nation want to know exactly what our president means by a new world order. Perhaps our chief executive himself is not entirely certain. It’s simply that he wants to see a kinder, gentler world. When he looks at this crazy world and he sees the international hostilities, this volatile world, when he sees the suffering and the pain and the hunger, the poverty, when he sees the injustice, he longs to see a world where justice will be served and peace established. He longs to see a new world. He longs to see a new world order.
You see, the Bible tells us that one day indeed there shall come a new world order and peace will be served,. Peace will be established, justice implemented, and it will be a kinder, gentler world. Truly, this is what Palm Sunday is all about, King and Kingdom. Palm Sunday is about the new world order. As we explore this subject of the new world order this Palm Sunday, I’d like us to focus on the answer to two questions. The first question is this: who’s going to be in charge? When the new world order comes, who’s going to be in charge?
You see, throughout history there have been men and women, and there have been groups that have sought a new world order. Some of them have been far less benign than President Bush. Some of these groups have been downright malignant. On May 1st, 1776, a man named Adam Weishaupt formed a secret society was called The Order of the Illuminati. The members of the Illuminati claimed to be mystically enlightened and very influential. People from throughout Europe joined this order of the Illuminati and the Illuminati joined hands with the mystically inclined upper levels of the continental high order of masonry. It was said that even King Frederick the Great of Prussia became a member of the Illuminati.
Historians tell us that the Illuminati was able to place some of its members in high government positions throughout Europe and began to influence politics around the world, even here in Colonial America. In fact, if you look at the great seal of the United States adopted in the year 1782 (and you can look at it, if you just take the look at the back of any $1 bill), you will see a pyramid. Beneath the pyramid, you’ll see the Latin words Novus ordo seclorum. Those Latin words mean new order of the ages.
Now, the person who designed that great seal of the United States with a pyramid and those Latin words Novus ordo seclorum, the person who designed that great seal was a man named Charles Thompson. He was associated with the high levels of masonry, and he was also a member or associated with the Illuminati. The desire and the goal of the Illuminati was to establish a new world order with a one world government, and that government was to be in the hands of the mystically enlightened. Now, the Novus ordo seclorum may have meant many different things to many different people, but to Charles Thompson, it had a special meaning surely.
Of course, historians tell us that the Illuminati may have even been significant in bringing about the French Revolution and the subsequent reign of terror. But the Illuminati failed to take control of any government and certainly failed to usher in a new world order. One day the new world order will come, but it will not be placed into the hands of the mystically enlightened.
In the 19th century there, there arose a man whose name was Cecil Rhodes. Cecil Rhodes was attending Oxford University. He came under the influence of another man whose name was John Ruskin. John Ruskin was a platonic idealist, and he longed for a new world order. He longed for a transnational one world government. He wanted that government to be in the hands of the intellectual elite. He looked for a world of peace and justice, but he truly believed that only a one world government in the hands of the intellectual elite could bring about such a platonic society or a platonic idealistic society.
Well, Cecil Rhodes kind of bought the dream of John Ruskin and Cecil Rhodes, as time went by, became highly powerful and influential and very wealthy. He began to monopolize the diamond mines and the gold fields of South Africa. He became very rich and he actually founded a nation, and the nation was named after him. He established a government in that nation where it was in the hands, at least in his view, of the intellectual elite. That nation named after him was called Rhodesia. Today, of course, it is called Zimbabwe.
Prior to the death of Cecil Rhodes, he established a scholarship fund, or he made arrangements that a greater portion of his wealth would be placed into a scholarship fund for the purpose of training the intellectual elite from around the world in his hope that someday they might usher in a new world order. That scholarship fund, of course, was called the Rhodes Scholarship. After the death of Cecil Rhodes, a mystic old secret society called the Round Table in Great Britain tried to carry on his work and they sought to usher in this new world order. Of course, they failed. One day the new world order will come, but it will not be placed into the hands of the intellectually elite.
Now in the year 1921, an organization was formed called the Council on Foreign Relations, and it was birthed during the Wilson Administration and it really was the dream of Wilson’s influential advisor whose name was Edward House. Now, the CFR, or the Council on Foreign Relations became very powerful as it began to be funded by the Rockefeller family in the late 1920s. The CFR, the Council on Foreign Relations remains very powerful today and it has in its membership people who are politically prominent. It’s had past presidents in its membership. It has in its membership people who are powerful in the world of business and economics, heads of great corporate conglomerates. The CFR seeks to influence political strategy here in America and as it is able strategy around the world. The goal of the CFR is a new world order and a transnational one world government. Perhaps more alarmingly, in the year 1973 in Tokyo, Japan, another organization was formed called the Trilateral Commission. It was the brainchild of David Rockefeller, and it was meant to establish on a global scale what the CFR was doing nationally. The Trilateral Commission brought into its membership powerful people from three portions of the world: from Japan, from Western Europe, and from North America. People who are powerful in politics and people who are powerful in the world of business and economics. Again, heads of corporate conglomerates with the goal that they might influence world politics and bring about a new world order.
If you read the Trilateral Commission taskforce reports (and I have read some of them), they blatantly, explicitly, seek a transnational one world government, which will usher in a new world order. One day, of course, the new world order will come, but when it comes it will not be governed by trilateralists. When it comes, it will not be placed into the hands of the political elite or the economic elite.
Now, in the year 1973, a document was written called the Humanist Manifesto. It was really the Humanist Manifesto II because it was simply an expansion of another document that had been written 40 years prior signed by John Dewey. But this Humanist Manifesto II was a document signed by scientists and educators the world over. An atheistic document, the document states, and I quote, “As humanists, we believe that traditional theism, especially faith and the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers and to be able to do something about them is an unproved and outmoded faith. Salvation based on mere affirmation of theology still appears as harmful, diverting people with false hopes of heaven hereafter. Reasonable minds look to other means for survival.” What are those other means? Well, this document signed by scientists and educators the world over says that their hope is placed in a transnational one world government, which will usher in a new world order.
This document states, “We deplore the division of humankind on nationalistic grounds. We have reached a turning point in human history where the best option is to transcend the limits of national sovereignty and the move towards the building of a world community in which all sectors of the human family can participate. Thus, we look to the development of a system of world law and a new world order based upon transnational federal government. This document has been signed, of course, by renowned people from the recently deceased Isaac Asimov to very well respected scientists such as Andrei Sakharov and the late B.F. Skinner, who’s been called the father of behaviorism.
Of course, one day the new world order will come, but when it comes, it will not be placed into the hands of the secular humanists. If you’ve studied the new age movement at all, you know that New Agers are not only monistic and pantheistic, but they’re globalistic. Many New Agers are advocating a new world order and they desire a new transnational one world government, a one world monetary system, a one world agricultural board. They want this new government to be placed in the hands of synergists, people who can take the multiplicity of religions, the variety of philosophies, the divergent cultures of the world and combine them into one essence. It’s what New Agers seek. One day, of course, there will come by the will of God, a new world order, but when it comes, it will not be placed into the hands of synergists.
The Bible tells us that at the consummation of this age, on the stage of history, the close of this age, there will arise a man. In the Bible, this man is sometimes called the antichrist. He is sometimes called the man of lawlessness, the son of perdition. The Bible tells us that this man will seek a new world order. He will seek a transnational one world government, and he will seek to run that government. He will head an alignment of nations and he will seek power over all nations. The Bible says he will seek power over every tribe and tongue and people and nation. He will create a computer-based cashless society, it appears, through which he will seek to control economically all the people within his sphere of influence. He will, the Bible says, require that every person receive a number in order to buy or sell.
He will fail. He will not create a new world order. He will not establish an effective transnational one world government. He will come to his ruin at a place called Armageddon. I hope you understand. I hope you understand that we live in a world where a growing number of people, some of them explicitly, some more implicitly, seek a transnational one world government and a new world order. You might say, “Well, why not? Doesn’t it make sense to centralize? We’re one planet, we’re all people, we need a global economy. We need to be concerned with a global ecology. Why not have a one world government?”
But God would warn us as he did those at the Tower of Babel so long ago when he divided them, that power centralized is power that is dangerous. It’s Frederick Nietzsche who said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Nietzsche was not a Christian, but he understood the danger of power. You see, nationalism is dangerous, globalism far more dangerous in a fallen world. The desire for a transnational one world government to usher in a new world order is a desire that plays right into the hands of what the Bible calls the antichrist.
Well, you see, the Bible does tell us, and the Jewish people understood, that there’s a new world order coming. The Bible tells us that there’s a transnational one world government coming, and the Bible tells us there’s only one person who will be qualified to govern, to head, to lead this new world order and this transnational government. The Bible calls that one person, the anointed one. In the Hebrew, the word for anointed one is Messiah. In the Greek, the word for anointed one is Christ. You see, on Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, more than 1,900 years ago, as Jesus Christ came into that city, the Jewish people were desperate. They did not like this current world order. They didn’t like this world at all. They were longing for a new world and they knew the prophecies of scripture. They were tired of being a humiliated people subjected to foreign powers. They had been used and abused by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Mito-Persians, the Greeks, and now the Romans. The only peace they knew was Pax Romana. They wanted change. They wanted to be free. Maybe they hoped for even a kind of change where the nations of the earth would be reprioritized and they would be on top instead of Rome on top.
They knew the prophecies, they knew the Messiah, the anointed one, the Christ was coming. They knew that He would usher in a new world order, establish a one world government. When Jesus Christ came into Jerusalem that Sunday, many of the people recognized and believed He was the one. That’s why they were shouting “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, who comes in the power of God.” That’s why they were throwing their garments and palm branches before Him in the road. That’s why they were shouting, “Hosanna, save us.” That’s why they were shouting “Peace.” That’s why they were shouting “Glory in the highest.” They knew this to be the anointed one. They believed the Christ, the Messiah, the new world order.
But something went wrong. Something went wrong. I mean, he went into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday, and He didn’t ascend a throne. He didn’t establish a government. He didn’t conquer the nations. He didn’t take a crown, except for a crown of thorns. He went to the cross. Of course, as Christians, we know and understand that Christ came into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday, not to conquer the nations, but He came into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday to conquer sin and the conquered death. But the Bible tells us that one day He will come to conquer the nations. That really leads us to our second question, and I want to briefly focus on that: when’s it going to happen? When is the physical visible expression of the kingdom of God going to come?
When is Jesus Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, when is He going to conquer the nations? When is He going to establish a new world order? Of course, this relates to the whole biblical doctrine of the second coming of Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us that Christ will come again and when He comes, He will not come on a donkey When He comes again, He’ll not be born in a lowly manger. When He comes again, He will not bear a crown of thorns. He will not carry a cross. The Bible says He will descend from heaven “with a cry of command, with the archangels call, with the sound of the trumpet of God.” The Bible says, “Behold, He’s coming with the clouds and every eye will see him. Everyone who pierced Him and all the nations of the earth will cry out on account of Him.” The Bible says “He will sit on His glorious throne and before Him shall be gathered all the nations, and He shall separate them one from the other as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” The Bible says that “He will beat our swords into plowshares, our spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war anymore. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign and rule forever and ever.” Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself said, “Behold, I am coming with the clouds.” He said, “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense to repay everyone for what he has done. I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” You see, He is the anointed one. He is the Christ. He is the Messiah. He is the Son of God. And He alone will rule the world to come.
But when will He come? When will the second coming take place? I think most of you know that Christians in generations past through the centuries have made the mistake of setting a day or an hour when Christ might return. You know your Bible. You know how the Christians in Thessalonica quit their jobs and began to wait. Most Bible scholars believe they did this because they thought the return of Christ was imminent, the end of this age, the coming of the new heavens and the new earth. The Apostle Paul wrote to them and said, “Go back to work.”
In the second century, Montanists, Maximilla and Priscilla, led a group of thousands of believers to Turkey, to Phrygia, to await the second coming of Jesus Christ, which they claimed was imminent and that they had received this by prophetic utterance. People followed them there and they waited, but Christ did not come. Around the year 500, it was a bad time for the city of Rome. Arian vandals had sacked the city and gothic hordes surrounded the city and food supplies were cut off. Historians tell us that many mothers actually ate their young. The theologian Pelagius was convinced it was the end of the age. This was the great tribulation, the birth pains that would bring about the dawning of a new age. But it didn’t happen.
Around the year 1000, Otto III ascended the throne and the Roman Catholic Church said it was the end of the age and the dawning of the millennial kingdom. But it didn’t happen. Around the year 1500 Savonarola predicted the second coming of Christ and he set the day and the hour. But it didn’t happen.
Of course, in the 19th century, there were thousands of men and women who quit their jobs and some of them went on mountaintops, some of them perched in trees, some waited in cemeteries. It was April 3rd, 1843. William Miller, the great New York preacher, had announced to his people that Christ was coming. On April 3rd, 1843, thousands of people waited. Christ didn’t come. William Miller gathered himself and set another date. He said, “Well, I miscalculated. It was really May 22nd, 1844.” So the people waited again and again, Christ did not come. So he set another date, October 22nd, 1844. 50,000 Millerites quit their jobs. I mean, rarely has there been a more gullible group of followers than the Millerites. Of course, October 22nd came and Christ did not. Today, the Seventh Day Adventist flourish and they can trace their history in part to the teachings of William Miller. But they have learned to no longer set dates for the return of Christ. They have learned not to guess the day or the hour, and we should learn as much.
The Lord Jesus Himself said, “No one knows the day or the hour of my return.” The Apostle Peter said, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some would think. But remember with the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day.” “Some will scoff,” the Bible says, but one day Jesus will come. Though we do not know the day or the hour, the Bible does tell us that we ought to recognize the signs. The Bible gives many signs that would indicate the season of his coming. One sign is the breakdown of the family. The Bible says that “in the end times children will rise up against their parents and the hearts of moms and dads will grow cold.”
Another sign is the proliferation of knowledge and travel. Of course, both knowledge and travel have increased exponentially during the 20th century. Another sign is growing apostasy in the visible institutional church. Perhaps the key sign is the reestablishment of the nation of Israel as the Bible prophesies time and again that the Jews would return to their homeland and establish a nation once again. This prophecy incredibly, miraculously fulfilled in 1948 and the biblical prophecy that the Jews would repossess the city of Jerusalem once again, which again was fulfilled in 1967. We are seeing prophecy blatantly fulfilled before our very eyes. Jesus said, “When you look at a fig tree and you see it giving forth leaf, you know that summer is drawing near. Even so when you see certain signs, you’ll know that My coming is near.”
So perhaps, perhaps we are in the season of His coming. Certainly, many signs are being fulfilled, but God doesn’t want us to set the day or the hour. He wants us to focus on the task at hand. He wants us to understand that, in a sense, Christ visits us this very day. You see, Jesus Christ went into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and Jesus wept. He said, “Would that even today, you knew the things that make for peace, but they’re hidden from your eyes. I tell you that the day will come when your enemies will cast a bank about you, surround you, hem you in on every side, dash you to the ground, you and your children within you. Not one stone will be left upon another in you.” Of course, He was prophesying the ruin of the city of Jerusalem in 70 AD by Titus in his Roman legions.
Jesus said, “all because you did not know the time of your visitation.” He had visited them that day. Though His kingdom, though the new world order was not to be physically and visibly established that day, He was offering spiritually for them to enter His kingdom that day. He was offering them, He was inviting them to enter His kingdom and embrace His reign and they refused.
It is the mystery and the power and the glory of the gospel that whenever the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached, Christ visits the hearers. He visits us today. For some of you, this is the moment of your visitation. Christ is saying, “Embrace the King. Receive my kingdom.” Spiritually, today you can enter this new world order, the kingdom of Jesus Christ if you would receive Him as Lord and the Savior of life, we invite you this Palm Sunday to receive the King. Let’s close with a word of prayer.