(Part 14 in the multipart series “Where We Stand“)

Do you believe in a “little season” of Satan? You know, that short clip of history before the End when the devil and his horde get to go a little extra crazy, rampage, and make things super-nasty right up to that moment when the Second Coming saves us from all of it?

Because, you see, I don’t. I think that the “short time” Lucifer will be unleashed upon the earth, according to St. John’s Apocalypse, is actually just apocalyptic talk for the time period between the resurrection of Jesus and the Eschaton. I also think it is thematically paired by St. John against the Thousand Year Reign of Christ, which began at Jesus’ death and shall never pass away. The little season is something of the weak, second-fiddle underbelly of the devil’s attempt to topple Jesus’ Reign. It is on these grounds that I therefore also find all attempts to play ”pin the tail on the antichrist” to be boorish.

But.

If I did believe in a so-called “little season” of Satan, a time period during which a visible, cult-like, one-world religion, by deep guile and great might, corrupts and empties the visible Christian churches on earth by means of talking images who work false wonders so that a mass formation psychosis descends upon the masses of the world who then worship the image, then I think I’d have to believe that that is precisely what is happening right now.

I mean, just when did treating an image as an oracle stop being idolatry?

It’s not just that the world of “it’s entertainment!” is overtly and flagrantly addictive, nor merely that it saps your willpower, empties your capacities, and diminishes your spirit. It’s not just that the airwaves are filled with disinformation and misinformation, nor only that the usage of this technology has run nigh hand-in-hand with the collapse of our once-great civilization. It’s really that, for the non-Christian, there is no other option: watching TV is idolatry.

This is in part because everything the non-Christian does is idolatry. It’s not that pictures are morally evil, as if there was no greater wickedness in the known universe than Fujifilm. For the non-Christian, life is all-false-worship all-the-time. The natural man cannot look on images without abusing them, turning to them with the fear, love, and trust that he ought to place in higher things.

Worship is a matter of the stories you tell, their places, and their endings. Why are so many Christians spending more time willingly lulled by pagan oracles than immersed in the wisdom of Jesus written in the Scriptures? Why are we letting the wicked control our dreams and craft our narratives for us?

Is it because we have confused leisure with gluttony?
Yes.

Is it because drunkenness is about much more than just alcohol?
I think so.

It doesn’t matter if there is a little season.

What are you going to do now?

Till angel cry and trumpet sound,
The Mad Christian