Do you ever read, watch, or hear news reports and say to yourself: “The world has gone crazy!” or something to that effect? Certainly, this seems to be a world going–or already gone–mad. The observation is worthy of in-depth investigation.

Looking in any direction across the landscape of human interaction produces undeniable evidence. This is a planet of people whose sanity is under assault by an unseen force. It is the same sin-sickness that infected the first recorded rebel, Lucifer the fallen one, who is so delusional that he thinks he can still defeat the God of heaven. Thus, I give the malady the designation the “Devil’s dementia.” Indeed, it has gone viral upon planet earth.

The supernaturally inflicted dementia has brought much of humanity to the point that mankind’s thinking has become reprobate. The word reprobate is defined as: morally depraved; unprincipled; bad. Reprobate thinking is rejected by God and beyond hope of salvation (apart from redemption found only in Jesus Christ). It is the kind of thinking with which Satan, the devil, now incessantly assaults God’s creation called man. Mankind is thus fatally infected, his mind only on evil continually, just as prophesied.

Jesus said it would be like in the days of Noah at the time of His Second Coming (Lk. 17:26-27). When we check those days, we find the following: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5).

Let us consider the spreading dementia that afflicts our nation and the world at this late hour in history. Analyzing the arenas of human endeavor and the upside-down thinking that pervades will quite possibly further give us a sense of where this generation stands on God’s prophetic timeline.

Religious Dementia
Religion, rather than acting as a comforting abode for the spirit as it is purported to do, more often inflames passions and ignites wars than soothes the savage beast within man. The most volatile religion of our time has at its very heart the demand that genocide be perpetrated upon God’s chosen people. Jihad is the term for “holy war” that inspires much of Islam. It is sheer insanity that demands that parents strap bombs to their sons and daughters to blow up others–this in the name of bringing into being peace on earth!

Christianity today more and more spotlights the madness of the hour. Many who say they are Christians have turned from the very reason for Christianity’s name–Jesus Christ and His death, burial, and resurrection as sacrifice so men, women, and children can be redeemed from sin. False teachers and preachers divert the minds and hearts of people to fables. It is an inward turning toward self-centeredness and away from reaching out to the lost of the world as Christ commissioned His followers to do.

In the name of Christ, Catholicism harbors a seemingly endless number of priests who are pedophiles, who prey on the innocent children who are supposed to be under their watch care. This is reprobate thinking and an assault on God–perversion of the worst sort.

The devil’s dementia is working within the Church today, through the wolves in sheep’s clothing, as condemned by Scripture:

“Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith” (2 Tim 3:8).

“They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate” (Titus 1:16).

Socio-economic Dementia
All one has to do to understand what is going on in bringing down the United States is to cogitate on the thoughts recently uttered by one of America’s avowed enemies. “Fidel Castro, Cuba’s former president, wrote in an essay that passage of the American healthcare overhaul is ‘a miracle’ and a major victory for Barack Obama’s presidency, but called it ‘really incredible’ that the U.S. took more than two centuries from its founding to approve health benefits for all” (“In the News,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 3/26/10, p. 1).

The American government and the present administration demonstrate beyond any doubt the dementia that affects U.S. leadership. These “leaders” demand that Americans learn to live within their means, yet the politicians run up tabs of trillions of dollars in the drive to convert the nation to European-style socialism at best–to a Marxist state at worst. The big tax-and-spenders have strapped and continue to strap future generations with debt that can never be repaid. Only God’s staying hand has prevented the complete implosion of the U.S. and world economies to this point.

It is madness, but if viewed through spiritually attuned senses, it’s madness that can be understood as defiantly following the reprobate thinking that opposes the God of heaven. With a considerable majority of U.S. citizenry opposing the massive spending spree, the majority party ignores the people’s wishes. Instead they tie to their insane fiscal scheme taxpayer-funded abortions and other anti-God legislation, which enables atrocities such as public schools outlawing Bibles in classrooms while distributing condoms and birth control pills to students.

The madness spreads and metastasizes. FOX News reported Thursday, March 25, 2010, that a mother was devastated that her fifteen-year-old daughter was transported to an abortion facility by a public school in Seattle, Washington, for an abortion. This was done because the mother had signed a consent form she thought was for the child’s medical safety, in case there was a medical emergency while she was at school. The school powers-that-be interpreted the consent form as meaning they had the right to abort the child’s baby. That the girl was pregnant is troubling enough, but the government-funded school taking such godless action demonstrates a reprobate mindset that would have in earlier generations been unfathomable.

FOX News reported the same day that a phenomenon known as the “flash mob” has come into being, whereby young people assemble on an Internet gathering site, organize, then physically take to the streets to vandalize and destroy merchandise within stores and damage other places. The report disclosed that an activity known as “catch and wretch” is the recreational activity of a growing number of children as young as nine years old. They pick out a victim (sometimes the elderly), as would a pack of wolves, then they beat them and do other dastardly things. Lawlessness is the result of the devil’s dementia, of which Antichrist will one day be the chief proponent.

Geopolitical Dementia Nowhere is the upside-down thinking that is the devil’s dementia more evident, from the biblically prophetic perspective, than in the arena of geopolitics. Again, on FOX–“FOX and Friends,” Friday, March 26, 2010–I heard contributor Geraldo Rivera accuse Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being the cause of Middle East tensions. He implied that they were the roadblock to peace in the region because they consistently perpetrated acts against the impoverished Palestinian people.

Rivera had just returned from the region, and, in my view, painted Netanyahu as a tyrant, whose Likkud party wanted only to stir the boiling pot that is the Middle East, and was an obstacle to peace. He praised the Obama administration as the sane influence, and said the Israeli government should be pressured to give in to the two-state solution and the division of Jerusalem.

The devil’s dementia–the reprobate, woolly-mindedness–couldn’t be more exposed than through Rivera’s diatribe. Despite the fact that Israel’s enemies, since its reestablishment as a nation in 1948, have been blood-vowed to wipe the Jewish state from off the earth, Rivera and his ilk still spew with a straight face that Israel is the troublemaker.

The history is plain for anyone with a sound mind to understand. Gamel Abdul Nasser, the Egyptian tyrant, attacked Israel with a huge coalition of Arab states in 1956, and again in 1967. Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s leader, accompanied by another huge contingent of Arab states, assaulted Israel on Yom Kippur in 1973. The objective in all the wars initiated by the anti-Israel forces was to wipe the nation off the map. The Arab enemies of Israel still hold to the eradication of Israel as their focus of hatred. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has at every opportunity declared that he wants to scour the Jewish State from the earth; he even wants to bring on Armageddon so the 12th Imam can emerge from the ashes to institute Allah’s glorious reign upon earth.

And the world’s diplomats and media call Israel the culprit! The devil’s dementia has gone viral, and Jesus Christ is the only cure.

It seems observably true–to me, at least–that this generation stands on God’s prophetic timeline very near the time Daniel the Old Testament prophet described, as recorded in the following:

And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. (Daniel 2:40-43)

Daniel was given by God both the dream-vision that Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had one troubling nightand its interpretation. The dream was of a huge, metallic, man image. The image, Daniel interpreted, was of four world powers, and a final, fifth world power, which would come on the scene at the very end of human history just before God judged earth’s rebellious governments.Then, the prophecy indicates, a new regime–headed by God himself–will rule and reign:

And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. (Daniel 2:44)

Fifth and final world power
Daniel prophesied that the fifth world power will come out of the fourth. We know the order of world empires from history. The first Daniel interpreted, at the time he was giving the interpretation, was Babylon. The second would be the Medo-Persian. The third would be the Greek Empire, and the fourth would be the Roman Empire, represented in Nebuchadnezzar’s night-vision by the legs of iron. The fifth empire–the final empire, and the only one that is yet to come into being as fulfilled prophecy–is represented by the feet and toes of that metallic monstrosity.

To my understanding, at least, the five world empires given to Daniel in metallic representations–i.e., gold for the head, silver for the breast and arms, brass or bronze for the belly and thighs, and iron for the legs, feet and toes–is indicative of money and the power to rule over the inhabitants of planet earth. Metals have most always been at the center of any economy throughout history. And when the metals represented the power to mold and construct weaponry–e.g., spears, bullets, bombs, warcraft like tanks, planes, ships, etc.–the power of the metal and the economies of the world powers become understandable. Money is power, and power is control. These are inextricably linked.

The fifth world power will come from the Roman Empire, which disintegrated but is reforming, we who observe prophecy from the pretrib view believe. We believe that the European Union is almost certainly the nucleus out of which this last Gentile power is emerging. This is the area of central Europe in particular. Rome is the very heart of that nucleus.

Antichrist comes forth
Daniel also prophesied about the last world empire’s leader who would leap to center stage at just the right moment in Satan’s plans to bring him to power:

And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate. (Daniel 9:26-27)

Antichrist, “the beast,” as this vicious future tyrant is termed, will come to power and rule ruthlessly. His power will emanate from economics–the ability to call all to worship him through a mark and numbering system that will control buying and selling. (Read Revelation 13:16-18 to understand this 666 system of absolute control.)

Economics set the end times stage
We are witnessing economic rearrangements at present like no other generation has seen. Even the United States–as anyone with any sense of what’s been going on in the news will attest–is being forced into a mold of one-world economic order. It is all leading toward the mark and numbering system that will give Antichrist his power. (Read Revelation 17:12-13 to learn of the ten economic power blocs that will develop, then give power and authority to the beast–Antichrist, the ruler of the fifth and final world empire.)

Europe in upheavel
Europe today is in dynamic upheaval, struggling to stand on the feet and toes that will give the eventual Antichrist system its balance, its equilibrium. But just as Daniel the prophet foretold, the feet and toes are not made of purely a metal of strength. The EU is made partly of the governmental strength that was the ancient Roman Empire, but also is constructed of weakness intrinsic within the governments of contemporary times. This makes the whole structure that is the final form of all worldly economic-governmental power subject to crashing to final collapse. This is exactly what Daniel foresaw as given above in Daniel 2:44.

A story this past week gives, I believe, an excellent example of the struggle the reviving Roman Empire is unwittingly engaged in to construct that final world rule Satan seeks.

STRASBOURG, France—With the European Union’s single currency in the grip of the worst crisis in its history, the bloc’s new president is expected to use the growing alarm over debt levels to argue for a new form of “economic government” in Europe.

The leaders [meet] on Thursday at a summit meeting in Brussels, now certain to be dominated by worries about deficit and debt levels in Greece. [EU Commission president Herman] Van Rompuy’s proposal could take main responsibility for stewardship of economic coordination out of the hands of the 27 nations’ finance ministers, elevating it to the level of heads of government. The plan could also reduce the role of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm.

According to a draft of one of two documents circulated before the meeting, Mr. Van Rompuy (pronounced rom-PWEE) will argue that “recent developments in the euro area highlight the urgent need to strengthen our economic governance…Whether it is called coordination of policies or economic government,” it adds, “only the European Council is capable of delivering and sustaining a common European strategy for more growth and more jobs…Recommendations for the euro area as a whole and its member states should be strengthened, with a stronger focus on competitiveness and macroeconomic imbalances,” the draft says. “This would be in line with the importance of economic spillover effects in the monetary union and the challenges the euro area is facing.” (Stephen Castle, “European Debt Issues Top Agenda for Meeting,” NYTimes.com, 2/9/10).

Paul the apostle wrote of the economic reality that drives the world toward God’s judgment and wrath: “But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:9-10a).

Rushing toward the end
Certainly, the truth of God’s Word frames what is happening at this time in history, and where it all is heading as the rulers of this fallen sphere grasp for the wealth of this world and strive to cast off the bonds of governance God wisely placed upon the would-be masters of planet earth.

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you. (James 5:1-6)

We are in the end of the age era of the toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s night-vision.