Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda during the years of the Nazi regime, put to the test Vladimir Lenin’s declaration that if you tell a lie often enough and long enough, people will soon come to believe it.
Millions of Germans did, indeed, come to believe the lies–chief of which, the one that the Jews were the single greatest cause of the problems Germany had experienced during the depression of that day. Many believed Goebbels’ incessant diatribes against all semitic peoples, and that the fuehrer was akin to a god, who would lead the German people to the utopia the propagandists termed “The Third Reich.”
The evil Nazi mouthpiece and the venom he injected into the Germans proved God’s word 100 percent accurate: “The getting of treasures by a lying tongue [is] a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death” (Prov. 21:6).
Few regimes in history have inflicted upon their victims the catastrophic scope of death and destruction wrought by the Nazis. Hitler’s promises to the German people were based upon demon-inspired deception; his promises of peace to the world were predicated upon hellish lies. The result was the death of millions in war and in the Holocaust. The people to whom the fuehrer made the promises suffered perhaps more than anyone, with the iron-fisted Soviet dictatorships from Josef Stalin through Leonid Brezhnev and beyond oppressing a divided Germany, as part of the spoils of war.
There is another apothegm that warns sternly, echoing within the ears of this generation. But, no one seems to be listening. At least not enough people are listening to cause a red flag of alarm to alert this generation.
George Santayana the philosopher said that those who refuse to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. The God of heaven gives His prescription/antidote for the lies spouted by the minions of the father of lies: “Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding” (Prov 23:23).
Not only are the geopolitical leaders of the world forgetting the warning of Santayana’s famous words, but so-called leaders within the body of Christ are beginning to fall victim to the very propaganda device Lenin warned about, and Goebbels gleefully adopted as his methodology for mesmerizing the German people of the 1930s and 40s. They are –many already have—falling for the lie that has been proclaimed loudly for a long time.
The nucleus of the lie is that Israel is the problem. This lie is, I’m beginning to think—the key to the coming Antichrist kingdom –another proof of the wisdom of Santayana’s words. Hitler’s horrors will be revisited upon not only the Jews (Jacob’s trouble – Jeremiah 30:7), but upon the whole world (read Revelation chapter 13, especially v.16-18). Antichrist’s regime will make Hitler’s Nazi atrocities seem almost child’s play by comparison, according to Jesus: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24:21).
Jesus gives, in the Olivet Discourse, forewarning that great deception will be prominent at the time He is set to return. Deception is at the very first of His warnings, as a matter of fact. Paul the apostle foretells in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 that one of the major things that will be going on during the tribulation era is that a “lie” will deceive most people. There can be little doubt that Antichrist’s system of world control will come in on a platform of deception that will put to shame, in terms of magnitude, Goebbels’ lies about the Third Reich.
Daniel the prophet forecast how the end-time tyrant will use deception. Antichrist will, Daniel foretells, come in on a platform of deceptiveness: “And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries” (Dan. 11:21). The “beast,” as he is called in Revelation 13, will concentrate most of his vitriol –as did Hitler—on the hated Jews: “And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do [exploits]” (Dan.11:32).
God’s people will stand strong against the deception that the Jew is the root of all evil during that era, Daniel foretells. Not so in this pre-trib era for the most part, it is sad to have to say. We can see the effects the satanic deception is having by looking at Israel. We can always count on the Jewish state to provide insight, while those who watch world issues and events through the prism of god’s prophetic Word seek discernment in these closing days of the age.
We remember how then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during a visit to New York during his time in power, proclaimed that he was for peace –wanted to live in serenity, like every other good citizen of the planet. This message was, on its surface, a far cry from the hate-filled rhetoric he used when he addressed his constituency back in the land where ancient Persia once sat. He flattered and cajoled the press and diplomats alike, and was flattered and feted in return. Israel was, by omission –those reporters and government officials who were so gaga over Ahmadinejad ignoring the tyrant’s stated fate planned for all Jews—accused, without overtly stating their opinion, of obviously being the culprit in Middle East threats of war. That this great man, the Iranian president, was just too interested in peace for the whole world to ever be a warmonger, was the sense one got upon observing the love fest during those times.
Yet strangely, Ahmadinejad at the same time managed to tell the deluded, gullible, deceived people who fawned over him precisely his goals and ambitions. It was Hitlerian –even more profoundly mesmerizing than that. The man was positively luciferian in his deceptive presentation at Columbia University, and at the U.N.
Ahmadinejad spoke against U.S. intrusion in the Middle East; rejected the UN Security Council’s authority to take action against Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program; refused to retract his statements that Israel should be destroyed, removed from the world; held to his stance that people do not have a right to live their lives based upon right of personal freedoms; did not budge from Islamic demands that women be kept wrapped in silence beneath the cultural and societal surface.
The Iranian dictator, while refusing to answer directly questions about those matters, still managed to get reported as saying that Iranian women have full rights, and are free to live their lives as they please, and that homosexuals are not executed or tortured –adding that there are no homosexuals in Iran. These absurdities went basically unchallenged by the American mainstream press, which saw a lie behind every Bush Administration statement and consistently launched “journalistic” investigations based upon the slightest hint of perceived wrongdoing.
The news media did reportorial acrobatics to write glowing reports on Ahmadinejad, looking for any small sliver of evidence that he advocated peace and desires no ill will toward Israel, or Jews, anywhere. Today, even though Ahmadinejad is gone from the scene and others have taken his and his regime’s place, media hasn’t changed. They seem intellectually incapable of ascertaining truth about anything to do with Middle East insanity in hatred toward Israel. Shades of the Fuehrer! Foreshadows of Antichrist! The beast of Revelation, chapter 13, will one day –perhaps sooner rather than later—place his key of great deception into the lock that holds shut the door to his murderous kingdom.