Antichrist: The Fulfillment of Globalization (Book Review)
Antichrist: The Fulfillment of Globalization (Book Review)
Thoughts and reflections upon finishing our first book.
Our first book is complete. This week we held our 4th and final weekly roundup for the book Antichrist: The Fulfillment of Globalization by G.M. Davis. Thank you to all who attended, I really appreciated your participation and hearing your insights. I am convinced that this is the the absolute best way to read a book - collaboratively with likeminded people who are familiar with related ideas that expand our knowledge of the text. Running a book club is also a totally new experience for me, so thank you for your patience while I learn how to provide the best experience for all of us.
I am very much looking forward to having a live discussion with the author, G.M. Davis who has kindly agreed to answer questions that we have been collecting throughout our reading of his book. That discussion will be uploaded here on Substack.
*Please submit any questions you have regarding Orthodox eschatology, the end-times, Antichrist or other related topics in the comments below and I will make sure to ask Dr. Davis during our discussion next week.
Reflections from my notes
I am fascinated by the understanding of gnosticism as the “primacy of knowledge” which can be applied to all the political movements, revolutions, religions and efforts of modern man. This concept contextualizes what Fr. Seraphim Rose considered the “religion of the future”, which is a gnostic pursuit of globalization, before the term was more commonly known. In fact, I would consider this a fantastic complimentary book to Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future as it brings more modern context to the shaping of the “new religious consciousness”.
In a sense, coming of the Antichrist will be a culmination of all mankind’s efforts to reunify the communication that God confused at the Tower of Babel. Confusion itself is an underlying theme leading up to the coming of Antichrist. In the section The Age of Confusion, Davis documents the many ways in which modern civilization in the west is being groomed throughout history into a globalized gnostic one world religion. We are experiencing America’s decline into a totalitarian socialist state like a boiling frog effect while everyone thinks they can vote their way out through democracy. To quote St. John Kronstadt, “In hell there is democracy. In heaven is a Kingdom.”
As a result of the Reformation and enlightenment tearing apart the Church as a transcendent state entity, the state has been on a quest to re-divinize itself with political gods incarnate in place of the ancient city-state patron gods, unified by the religion of its people. All these gnostic efforts of secular man throughout history have defined the eschaton as a constant movement towards the telos. There is a great deal of emphasis on the revolutions of the last 500 years from the Protestant Reformation to the current digital revolution, with the Bolshivek revolution dissolving the Russian Orthodox empire as a clear landmark ushering in the end of world history.
With the rapid advancement of digital technology accelerating both the age of confusion and man’s quest for gnosis, its role becomes more clearly defined in the last days. Davis refers to the age of Antichrist being witnessed by the entire world through our screens. It can now be easily imagined how the Antichrist can even broadcast live appearances and communicate with the world simultaneously through instant AI translation. This would be a demonic inversion of the the miracle of tongues descending on believers during Pentecost, reuniting the Church after the confusing of the tongues at Babel.
Inversion is a prominent theme that runs through this book as all the false miracles and events that take place throughout the age of Antichrist will be a “mimicry of the God-man as a man-god” (p.20). Every anti-Christian movement throughout history can be interpreted as a gnostic inversion of Christ.
Now with this new religious consciousness culminating at the forefront of civilization, the Christian faith itself has been utterly confused, fragmented and amorphous in the modern west, widely known in its ecumenist state. The Evangelical obsession with end-times prophecy and their various eschatological factions is a gnostic pursuit in itself. The danger of this end-times mania of Evangelicals being that expectation of certain events to happen at a specific time in a particular way will inevitably lead to the greatest deception of mankind in the acceptance of Antichrist. Davis makes it clear throughout the book that apocalyptic knowledge is not enough to save us, we must remain prayerful and sober in mind and heart.
If we don’t prepare ourselves for the 2nd coming of Christ by resisting globalization, we will be groomed by the spirit of the age for the coming of the Antichrist.
Book Club Archive | March 14th - April 13th
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The final chapter of the book is titled Empire of the Pharisees which is about the role of Jews in the end of history and their relation to the true Israel, the Orthodox Church. Davis draws a good amount of references from “The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit” by E. Michael Jones and relates it to the coming of the Antichrist, which we discuss in the audio recording from our meeting, behind the paywall below. In our discussion from this week, I expound upon some of the insights from Jones’s book as well.
Paid subscribers can listen to the 120 minute recording below and in case you still haven’t joined, I’ve included an invite link. Hope to see you in the next one!
🎧 Listen to: Book Club Roundup #4 Live Audio
Antichrist: The Fulfillment of Globalization (Final) ⬇️