In December 2020, Pope Francis released a book titled, Let Us Dream: the path to a better future.(1) The fly cover says:

In the Covid crisis, the beloved shepherd of over one billion Catholics has seen the cruelty and inequity of our society more vividly exposed than ever before. He has also seen in the resilience, generosity, and creativity of so many people, the means to rescue our society, our economy, and our planet. In direct, powerful prose, Pope Francis urges us not to let the pain be in vain.(2)

Francis goes on to say, “[A]n ark awaits us to carry us to a new tomorrow. Covid-19 is our Noah moment, as long as we can find our way to the Ark of the ties that unite us: of love, and of a common belonging.”(3)

Now, in order to understand the remainder of my reaction, let me sum for you in one paragraph the lens through which I react.

My working picture of what has been happening in our world over the past year is that a group of ambitious, power-seeking utopians has hijacked what was probably a laboratory accident involving biowarfare research, in a play to speed the advance of their agenda. Intoxicated with tower-builder thoughts of “saving” the world and remaking it in their own image (see Genesis 11), through technocratic and financial influence they have led politicians and governments to do their will.

The result has been to strip away human freedoms.

So now, to his book: the pope is just fine with that. And no surprise; all the way back in 1863, then-pope Pius IX declared that the idea that “liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right”(4) is a totally false”(5), “erroneous opinion.”(6)

And so, Pope Francis gives practically unqualified endorsement to the way that governments have handled the Covid-19 crisis. He fully legitimizes their exercise of power to force social distancing, mask-wearing, and travel restrictions:

Some media have used this crisis to persuade people that foreigners are to blame, that coronavirus is little more than a little bout with the flu, that everything will soon return to what it was before, and that restrictions necessary for people’s protection amount to an unjust demand of an interfering state.”(7)

Social distancing is a necessary response to a pandemic.(8)

Some of the protests during the coronavirus crisis have brought to the fore an angry spirit of victimhood, but this time among people who are victims only in their own imagination: those who claim, for example, that being forced to wear a mask is an unwarranted imposition by the state, yet who forget or do not care about those who cannot rely, for example, on social security or who have lost their jobs.(9)

[S]ome groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions—as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens, and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.(10)

As Pope Francis says, in his view, “It is all too easy for some to take an idea—in this case, for example, personal freedom--and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything.”(11)

But “personal freedom” is not just “some idea”! It is the central question in the battle between good and evil. God wants us to use the gift of freedom responsibly; Satan wants to eliminate personal freedom. Worship is a choice. But for the past 18 months the world has experienced a conditioning program preparing us to be compelled to do what governments will command us to do.

Revelation chapter 13 prophesies of a day soon to come in which governments will employ force to determine who can buy and sell and who cannot.(12) We can be certain that the fundamental argument of the pope in this book—that human governments are right to use force to enforce what the ruling elites declare to be the common good—will soon be employed to decide who can buy or sell, who can feed their families and who cannot—in service to the alleged “common good.”

In this book, the pope reinforces the “common good” argument a dozen times while attacking individualism just as often.(13)

Indeed, Pope Francis joyfully journeys with you down into buzzward valley. He wants the utopians and technophiles to know he is on their side. He spews the standard narrative. Like little frogs from the Nile, out come the desired bits:

We must redesign the economy so that it can offer every person access to a dignified existence while protecting and regenerating the natural world.(14)

[R]eversing the processes of dehumanization in our current world will depend on the participation of the people’s movements. They are sowers of a new future, promoters of the change we need: to put the economy at the service of the people to build peace and justice, and to defend mother earth.(15)

[People have] the right to safe and decent work.(16)

Labor is. . . a right and duty for all men and women.(17)

I believe it is time to explore concepts like the universal basic income (UBI), also known as ‘the negative income tax’: an unconditional flat payment to all citizens, which could be disbursed through the tax system.(18)

How will we deal with the hidden pandemics of this world, the pandemics of hunger and violence and climate change?(19)

[L]eft to their own devices, markets have generated vast inequality and huge ecological damage. . . . market forces cannot on their own deliver the goal we now need: to regenerate the natural world by living more sustainably and more soberly while meeting the needs of those who have been harmed by or excluded from that economy until now. . . . we need an economy with goals beyond the narrow focus on growth, that puts human dignity, jobs, and ecological regeneration at its core.(20)

The protests surrounding the death of George Floyd are regarded by the pope as occasions of “healthy indignation.”(21) But more interesting to me are his attacks against “fundamentalists.” Pope Francis warns that

[F]undamentalist mindsets. . . offer you an attitude and a single, closed way of thinking, as a substitute for the kind of thinking that opens you to truth. Whoever takes refuge in fundamentalism is afraid of setting out on the road to truth. . . . I learned not to demand absolute certainties in everything. . . . I see the truth lying outside of us, always beyond us, but beckoning us through our consciences.(22)

The pope doesn’t like people holding their own viewpoints, presenting perspectives outside the carefully-crafted mainstream narrative. He is nervous when people operate outside the utopian consensus. And so, he warns against different kinds of violence. He has special concern about “verbal violence.”(23) Of course, as soon as we agree to the proposition that there is such a thing as verbal violence, force is justified to curb it and we have arrived at the place of censorship.

The pope makes some weak critiques of technocracy in the book, but they are inconsequential. He will not be persuading the Faucis and Gates’ of the world and does not expend much energy trying. But let’s return to the pope’s idea about covid being a “Noah moment.”

The book was co-authored by another individual, Austen Ivereigh, and Ivereigh says something intriguing near the end of the book.

Outwardly, the ‘Pope in lockdown,’ cut off from the people looked helpless. Yet those close to him told me the opposite: that he was energized by what he saw as a threshold moment, and the movement of spirits beneath its surface.(24)

This “threshold moment” idea matches what is implied in our earlier quote: “[A]n ark awaits us to carry us to a new tomorrow. Covid-19 is our Noah moment, as long as we can find our way to the Ark the unites us: of love, and of a common belonging.”

The Bible tells us that the flood truly was a transition from one world to another. There was cataclysm and judgment and change. But it is most difficult to see in Covid an epochal change of such magnitude. This crisis is 75% contrived, and the 25% that is authentic crisis is mostly that because we are at the storm front of a vast renegotiation of personal liberty, where governments and their agents are in process of usurping rights and liberties they have no authority to take from us.

Revelation chapter 18 points us to the final development of such a scenario, when the leaders of governments and the merchants of the earth make their play for global hegemony. What is fascinating is how easy it has become in the past 18 months to see what that could look like. You would have immense wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. You would have tech monopolies censoring speech. You would have bored, hyper-rich tower-builders deluded into thinking their schemes and plans necessary to save the world from itself. You would have a combination of religious thinking manifesting in full contradiction to the Bible. And, in Revelation 18 you see that it would all fail under the judgment of God. It is from our present standpoint in the flow of time that at last we can see how present players could combine to bring that all to pass.

Austen Ivereigh fancies Pope Francis to be “the world’s spiritual director”(25) to carry us through this time. But if he is working in combination with the kings and merchants of the earth, if the “movement of spirits beneath the surface” is not from God’s kingdom, might it not be that we stand very near the culmination of the battle between good and evil, and that the most important spiritual director any of us can connect with is not in Rome but in heaven, that Jesus, our great High Priest, is soon to return literally, and utterly burn Babylon—all of it--with fire?

Beware the dreams of the false prophets—even those wearing capes and crucifixes.

Larry Kirkpatrick serves as pastor of the Muskegon and Fremont MI Seventh-day Adventist churches. His website is GreatControversy.org and YouTube channel is “Larry the guy from Michigan.” Every morning Larry publishes a new devotional video.