In the final, revelatory book of the Bible, we are told to beware the “mark of the beast”—that is, the mark of the devil or Satan himself. The number 666 denotes it.
“And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its head,” John writes. “And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority.”
John, writing on the remote island of Patmos, was portraying the beasts already foretold in the Old Testament book of Daniel, representing a great empire—Rome—an uncivil, inhumane, and debauched place not supportive of its citizenry, which then turns its back on God and worships the devil. The pagan Romans are depicted as akin to a ferocious and devastating beast from the sea that eats all that is in its path.
Today, we have a new, modern beastly mark to beware, and I would argue that it is anything and everything, with the prefix “multi.”
Let me explain.
Multi borrows from the Latin word “multus” (much, many), which in turn was derived from a Greek word meaning “very.” For our current purposes, it’s a shortened form of the word multiple but it can often spell pure evil and the opposite of the good or godly. Here are six vivid examples to illustrate the point.
Multiculturalism
Multicultural constitutes several cultural or ethnic groups within a given society. As a political philosophy, it leads to identity politics and the politics of recognition, as well as its twin, affirmative action. It abandons the unity of a polity (E Pluribus Unum—“out of many, one”—the motto of the United States) and dissembles its subgroups to the end of internal conflict and racial and class warfare. It is presently leading to the death of Europe. More recently in the United States, it has been embodied in critical race theory and racial hatred of white people and the larger culture, especially the American founding, and the institutions and Constitution it originated. In corporations, this trend is found in diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives that end meritocracy and all objective measures of performance and evaluation.
Multinationals
Including several countries or nationalities, particularly multinational corporations, in worldwide enterprises that shed responsibility and taxation in any one or home country by seeking to be transnational, and above the law or liability. This trend to borderless and globalist companies is fostered by the Great Reset and the impetus of corporate control denying the nation-state and sovereignty. International bodies or Davos-like elite globalist cults are seen as preferred over traditional nation-states.
Multilateralism
In international relations, multilateral refers to alliances and détente among many countries pursuing a common goal or set of policies. This is in contrast to bilateral relations between two established sovereign countries. It is anti-sovereign in orientation and ultimately concludes in a movement to one world government and supranationalism.
Multifunctional
This describes a system that does several things or has many different uses, designs, teams, devices, or products. Multifunctionalism has led to the diminution of responsibility, complexity of life, and in social thought to the bureaucratization of policy in the administrative state.
Multisexual
The multisexual spectrum, also known as “M-spec,” bisexual umbrella, or plurisexual, is a sexuality term consisting of any and all labels that represent the sexual attraction to more than one gender. Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, we have witnessed a total turning away from traditional and historic sexual categories, of manhood and womanhood, of marriage between the two, and of God’s sacrament of holy matrimony based in betrothal between a man and a woman in love, and for procreation. Multisexuality and transsexuality are the latest sinful turning away from God’s norms for human life and toward ungodly acts of idolatry and selfish hedonism.
Multireligious
Following the dictates and dogmas of many religions or none, multireligious tends to the eradication of religion altogether or a coalescing around some common global denominators, such as humanism or what is termed “global ethics.” Religions are disbanded and religious liberty eradicated.
In this secular era of what amounts to post-Christianity, it is unpopular to speak of the devil or anything even remotely aligned with the forces of spiritual darkness.
But it is absolutely necessary.
Spiritual darkness is the state of a person or a culture living apart from God. We used to refer to it as apostasy, the willful turning away from the creator, in rebellion. Edmund Burke wrote about this in his tome reflecting on the French Revolution, as did the profound Dutch political philosopher, Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, in his writing on revolution and anti-revolution which was rooted in his Christian understanding of God’s grace and the historical roots of Western civilization.
The Old Testament book of Isaiah, in prophesying the Messiah, spoke of a deep spiritual darkness that enveloped the people: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned” (Isaiah 9:2).
The passage reappears in the New Testament (in Matthew 4:16) to announce that those who have come to know the God of Israel through His son, Jesus Christ, are the ones who have been delivered from spiritual darkness and now walk in the light of God’s life, who follow His laws and have an indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
We need to beware of the “multi” and decry all that bears its mark in our era.
President Trump realized this and that is why he still has the nearly total support of the entire devout Christian Evangelical and Catholic communities in America and around the world. It is why the Jewish faithful have also turned to him, given his strong support for Israel. The imposter Joe Biden has no such insight nor support. In fact, in many ways, he appears to be doing the very work of the devil incarnate.
It would behoove all people to recognize spiritual darkness, in its myriad forms. As political philosopher Eric Voegelin argued in The New Science of Politics:
Philosophy springs from the love of being; it is man’s loving endeavor to perceive the order of being and attune himself to it. Gnosis desires dominion over being; in order to seize control of being the Gnostic constructs his system. The building of systems is a gnostic form of reasoning, not a philosophical one.
The ideological “isms” break both the First (Have no Gods before me) and 10th (Do not covet) Commandments and should be avoided and condemned. Our progressive era of gnosticism is a turning away from God and is a denial of the structures and relations He ordered, which beckon us to a higher calling.
I am not a prophet, or the televangelist Hal Lindsay, who penned a set of books on end times called The Late Great Planet Earth. No one has ever called me Nostradamus, nor have I lived on Patmos or in exile. I don’t know when the apocalypse will come but I know it is coming. The rapture, we are told, will happen in the “twinkling of an eye.” If you take seriously the creedal statements and liturgies of all the various Christian churches, “Christ will come again.” That Second Coming is when Christ returns to judge both the living and the dead.
But I strongly suggest, in the meantime, we all beware the multi!