Books and books could be written about why I believe what follows, but I have forced myself to keep it very brief. And if you want to understand my reasons (beyond the tidbits of reason that are interspersed with my predictions below), you’ll need to contact me privately, or get busy reading my writings on such things. (Almost no one ever does.)
First, I will list the rules of what we should expect. After that, I’ll speak to the possible exceptions―to things that might happen if enough people care enough to do enough to make enough change happen, and then maintain it enough to keep it going.
For the record―because some will really need to hear me say this, lest they assume themselves into misunderstanding me―I believe fully in God and Jesus and the scriptures, and I do not subscribe to any political party.
THE RULES
(What we should expect to see happen, barring any fantastic events.)
- Human nature will continue as it has always been. Here’s a quick breakdown.
A. Some people (relatively few) will remain quite hardened and diabolical. B. Most people will remain simple-minded―not entirely unteachable, but very hard to convince of a better way than how they already live. C. Only a few people diligently volunteer themselves to seek after knowledge and wisdom and righteousness. D. And zero people will attain to these things perfectly.
Generally, the psychopaths and narcissists in Group A control the masses in Group B, and Group C never has enough people in it to change the direction of things. Meanwhile, Group D has only ever had one man in it, and Group A killed him with the tacit support of many in Group B. Do not expect God to overturn human nature in 2024. He has never done it before, though he has always accepted and helped volunteers who seek wisdom and righteousness of their own volition. So unless there’s a huge and surprising uptick in such volunteering, expect human nature to stay unchanged in 2024. - The political corruption will continue. The various powers that vie for control will continue vying. This is how some people have always behaved, and always will. Do not expect God to undermine human nature in 2024, making people in government (or anybody else, for that matter) behave well. Indeed, when has he ever done that in this country’s history? Indeed, where is there any such promise in scripture that God will make bad people behave well in the regular business of politics?
- The economic corruption will continue. There’s just too much advantage to be gained (in the near term) from fiat currency and all that goes with it―provided you’re in the ruling class. Only very wise/righteous governors (of which there are very few, if any) want sound money; the rest learn how to profit from the fake-money system. There’s too much at stake for these people, and they will fight dirty to keep their financial house of cards propped up one way or another―just as they have been doing since 1776. Do not expect some knight in shining armor to ride in and save the day, when there are so very many crooked people trying to save the current system. If he’s really a threat to the system, they will kill him. So unless he has a tidal wave of public support behind him (and probably a veritable army, too), he’s very likely to lose any such quest.
- The corruption of the food supply will continue. Not only is great profit earned by selling us fake/corrupted food, but the secondary benefits to the big money people are tremendous: It ends up making us customers for Big Pharma and all the medical industry that supports it―where they profit from us all over again. But further―and this might even be the greatest motive behind it―by our food-induced sickness (and the brain fog that tends to go with it), they distract us from being good citizen-overseers of the government. The current food supply seems to make every other item on this list more likely to continue.
- The corruption of the media will continue. The media is the public relations department for the de facto government that runs this country. It is not their job to tell the truth, but to keep the people from getting too much out of hand. This will continue for as long as items 1 through 4 on this list continue. Also continuing will be the low mental state of the US citizens, who are so prone to believing too much of what they hear in the media. (If this last thing were to go away, mind you, many of the things on this list would quickly fall apart!)
- The corruption in education will continue. The federal government (and the interests that run it) have too much control in local publication education. This will continue unless there is a major shake-up in the items above. Further, even homeschooling is now being infiltrated by outside interests who want to corrupt as much of the homeschooling (both in philosophy and in practice) as possible, wrecking the education received at home. (Ask yourself this: Why would a corrupt government want any citizen learning to think straight and becoming a person of high character who might oppose the government’s corrupt agenda?)
- The corruption in the American churches will continue. Few will be able to accept this, but I believe that nearly every church is compromised in one way or another by the powers that be in this country―even if they don’t think they are. And as a result, they do not follow all the teachings of Jesus, even if they do follow some of them. This makes the religion different from what Jesus had in mind. Meanwhile, the churches teach their members practically (regardless of whatever they may say) not to look to Jesus and his scriptures for solutions, but to look to “the Church” and its tradition and its leadership for guidance. Jesus knows this is happening, but lets it continue. Do not expect him to change his policy and step in in 2024. It hasn’t happened yet, has it?
NOTE: You would draw a big red arrow from this #7 back to item #1. Volunteering oneself under the teachings of Jesus was the heavenly plan that was supposed to change the nature of a human. But the focus has since shifted from Jesus to church, and the churches don’t teach the whole of Jesus’ teachings. Therefore, the nature of the members is not being transformed in any substantial amount―such that Barna Research Group has sadly announced in recent years that it is very difficult indeed to tell the difference between the churched and the unchurched when it comes to how they live their lives. Well, I submit that this is also true when it comes to how they live as the supposed citizen overseers of our government―and how they operate as voters, and how they tolerate the rampant public corruption, including that in their own parties.
The churches have supplanted Jesus to a critical degree, and the religion becomes relatively worthless―not producing millions who behave much like Jesus, but millions who claim that Jesus is pleased with them, even if they behave like worldly people.
Do not expect God to intervene and make the churches change in 2024. Indeed, has he ever done this before? And is there any promise in scripture that he would make an unruly congregation repent―much less, an unruly franchising corporation? - The States will continue to get weaker, and the Federal Government stronger. Most Americans don’t know that the very First Congress of the United States passed the Judiciary Act of 1789, which included a Constitution-violating section that gave the US Supreme Court a negative over State laws. (They Act presumes to give SCOTUS the authority to bat down a state law by declaring it unconstitutional.) This was a flagrant violation of the then-brand-new Constitution, and it severely undermined the authority of the states to run their own business, and set us on a path to become the statist monolith that we are today (where the 50 states are seen mostly as outposts of the Central Government
― which idea is extremely at odds with the design of both our Constitution and the Articles of Confederation that preceded it.)
This Act is still on the books, never having been repealed. And this subjugation of the States will continue in 2024. - Foreign powers will continue to interfere in the US. Foreign countries have corrupt humans just like the US does. And the rich and powerful among them will continue to interfere here in the US, for whatever advantages they can gain from it. Money, land, influence in our government, etc.―all of this will continue if the items on this list continue.
- People will continue to engage in wishful thinking. You’ll continue to hear whispers that something good is coming―that it’s just around the corner―maybe that so-and-so will be elected president, or that the Army is going to take over any month now, and arrest all the corrupt people in government. You’ll continue to hear sentiment about making everything good again, and you’ll hear prayer requests about winning the country back for Jesus. But when has this country ever been run righteously? And when was it ever surrendered to Jesus, even 50% by any means other than mere talk?
Further, they’ll still be talk of “American exceptionalism”, even as American corruption becomes impossible to ignore.
You’ll also hear lots of “second coming” and “rapture” talk, mostly from Christians who are tired of it all, and simply wish that Jesus would come trump the current system and establish a heavenly system of his own, relieving them of their watch.
POSSIBLE EXCEPTIONS
The following scenarios may vary in their likeliness, but I’ll include them for academic purposes, if for no other reason. I’ll leave it to my audience to decide which is the most likely/possible―and which is the most “worth it”. Note that not everything on this list is absurd, so please don’t neglect to read it all just because one item strikes you as stupid.
- Maybe human nature might just change en masse. Hordes of people―enough to make a real difference―might decide to learn to be wiser and more righteous and proactive in 2024. Maybe they’ll put their foot down and make the governments do right.
- Maybe God will finally decide to intervene, and make #1 happen―or any other item on this list, for that matter.
- Maybe the powers that influence the US Government to violate it’s Oaths might just turn themselves in, and cut out all the undermining that they do.
- Maybe the office-holders in the US Government might decide to quit violating their Oaths, and turn their backs on the influencers who are steering things, refusing any further directives from them, rejecting their bribes, and daring to ignore their threats of retaliation. They could just repent and do the jobs they are sworn to do.
- Maybe the voters might just decide to quit voting for people who have already proven themselves to be Oath-breakers.
- Maybe the Media will all decide to start telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
- Maybe the churches will decide to start teaching the whole of Jesus’ teachings, rather than just cherry-picking the parts they like, and ignoring the parts they don’t.
- Maybe some coup will succeed from within, and a beneficent king will emerge, setting up a new government, meting out justice and righteous administration until he dies, and someone else is in charge.
- Maybe some foreign power invades, and sets up a king (as in #8 above), or sets up a government here that’s as bad or worse than the government we already have.
- Maybe the mismanagement of the US continues, and it gets so bad that it all devolves into lawlessness and financial collapse.
- Maybe a state secedes from the Union―and this time, maybe it is allowed that right―or maybe, like last time, it is denied that right, and total war is committed against it by the Union, in order to quash any idea that a state should be able to run its own business.
- Maybe the US splits into several countries, which may or may not be able to coexist peacefully.
- Maybe there are substantial attacks against the US population, such as by biological or chemical warfare, if not by the disarming or outright murder of the people.
- Maybe Group A above attacks Group C specifically―or influences some subset of Group B to do it.
- Maybe Group C above attacks Group A specifically―and influences some subset of Group B to help do it.
- Maybe 2024 sees things in the US continue on the same course as in 2023, steadily declining. Maybe it doesn’t all “fall apart”. Maybe no noteworthy reform happens, either. Maybe leaders continue to vie against one another, each making promises he or she can’t keep, in hopes of gaining more support than his or her opponents. Maybe the people keep looking for a way to make the best of it, surviving as they can, and trying to convince themselves it’s “no that bad”.
Jack’s Conclusions
For what it’s worth, I expect everything in the first list to continue this year. And as far as the second list goes, I expect at least #16 to happen.
In my later years, I’ve beaten the public reform drum a little less than before, after having realized that the kind of public reform people might find agreeable is 100% dependent upon the individual reform of some substantial percentage of the citizens themselves. To take a ridiculously-rough-but-still-probably-useful stab at some math, I’d put it something like this:
If even 10% of Americans would become even 50% like Jesus, they could be effective at curbing, say, 30% of the public corruption in the US. And from there, the question becomes whether those people will continue to overcome, enduring to the end, or whether they will give up the right for righteousness.
Are my numbers right? Probably not. It’s just an hypothetical stab at problems of this sort, based on my human observation of how things tend to go, and on my study of the Bible and of Cognitive Science (how people tend to think). Perhaps our prospects are twice as good as I think―or perhaps they’re only half as good as I think. Either way, it comes down to whether enough people will become wise and righteous to make enough difference.
But there will always be the wishful thinking that says, “If only we could get a good man (or woman) in the White House!” Or, “If only Jesus would come back and just put and end to everything.” Or even, “If all you complainers would just stop complaining, at least things would be a bit more peaceful!”
So that’s it.
So that’s what I wanted to write on this first day of 2024. If you want to know more, contact me, or read this blog and its 1,343 posts, or read my novel: The Extraordinary Visit of Benjamin True: The state of the Union as no one else would tell it.
Almost zero people contact me. Almost zero people read my blog or my novel, or listen to my Bible podcast. Almost zero people seem interested in doing anything new to fix what ails us. They all tend to think that “more of the same” is what’s needed―and if not that, they just kick the can down the road, hoping that Jesus will come back and fix it all for us.
But I think Jesus has left it to us, even as so many of us seem to adamant on leaving it to Jesus. We’ve got a standoff, then, and all we’ve got going for us is wishful thinking, while Jesus holds reality in his hands―including the fact that he gave humans a mind that can learn and grow if it wants to.
I still think it’s feasible that we could decide to become diligent followers of Jesus, and devote ourselves to learning his every lesson, which might just make us into the sort of citizens who would reasonably succeed as citizen-overseers under a Constitution like the (pretty-good-but-imperfect) one we have. But it’s all a numbers game. There have to be enough deliberate-good-guys to sway the simple-minded masses if you’re ever going to run the deliberate-bad-guys out of business. There simply are not enough. And at the same time, many of the simple-minded masses have been tricked into thinking themselves to be deliberate-good-guys when they are not.
This, I believe, is what time it is.
Still.
