If you are blissfully unaware of the atrocities taking place in Ukraine at the hands of Russia’s totalitarian president, Vladimir Putin, it’s past time to start paying attention. Why? Well, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes would put it, “Something sinister is afoot.” Empires of evil are on the move. Or rather, they’ve always been on the move, but now they are out in the open. Even as I type these words, bombs are falling on innocent children, and bullets are raining down on civilians who once thought themselves insusceptible to such violence. As I watch and read news clips and have conversations with friends and acquaintances about the Russian invasion, something nags in the back of my mind like a repressed memory that won’t surface. I’ve pondered over it, but even still, the precise nature of my concern hasn’t fully formed. But if you’ll bear with me, I’ll attempt to articulate a universal problem this recent invasion exposes.

An Oddly Shocking Emotion

I think it’s the shock—the sheer unadulterated disbelief. It’s plastered on the face of every pundit, politician, and private citizen as they talk about the invasion of Ukraine. Isn’t history filled with more war than peace? Yes, it is. Furthermore, doesn’t the Bible emphatically teach that peace will not be a long-term reality in this fallen world? Why, yes, it does. Sorrow, disgust, anger, disappointment, frustration, and indignation are appropriate emotions for this situation. Maybe I’m just strange, but all the shock doesn’t seem reasonable to me. Regardless, it does make sense because we’ve been carefully lulled into a utopian mindset. And I include Christians in that number. We’ve grown to believe that civilized nations don’t want war. We’ve bought the hedonistic lie that wars will cease to exist if everyone can just watch enough Netflix and get the newest Apple gadget. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think we have a well-developed philosophy. Theoretically, Christians know that things like materialism, social justice, and the redistribution of wealth are ultimately futile. They certainly don’t fill the human soul with peace. Yet, perhaps the materialistic side of things has unwittingly swept us into a slumber of sorts. To be kind, maybe it’s just been a light nap. Either way, it’s time to wake up and remember that evil is real, and it’s always prowling about in the shadows waiting for the chance to pounce.

The Fall of the Wall

I think the nap began at the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. When the Cold War ended, I was only six years old, and the Evil Soviet Empire collapsed. “We beat those commies back,” I’d hear the old folks say enthusiastically. But it would have been more accurate to say we temporarily pushed it back into the shadows. Few would have believed back in 1989 that most millennials would prefer socialism over freedom in a matter of decades.

It’s Hard to Find the Bodies

“At least they’re not commies,” you might say. But as Marion Smith, the director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said, “Christians go to heaven, whereas socialists go to communism.”[i] Michael Knowles perspicaciously points out in the forward to the must-read book, The Devil and Karl Marx, “The problem with socialism isn’t the inefficiency; it’s the evil.”[ii] Paul Kengor refers to communism as a “killing machine.” He states, “Any ideology with a trail of rot like this is not of God but of the forces against God. It is not of God’s creation but a fallen angel’s anti-creation. It is not of the light but of the dark.”[iii] He’s referring to the bloody death toll communism has amassed, which is a number somewhere between 100 million and 166 million people killed by communist regimes in the name of progress. You might wonder why we don’t know the exact numbers. Well, it’s hard to find the bodies. We’ll probably never know how many die each day in the concentration camps of North Korea or the secret barracks of China. And remember, we’re not talking about distant history. No. These things occurred in the twentieth century, and they’re still happening right now.

Michael Knowles perspicaciously points out in the forward to the must-read book, The Devil and Karl Marx, “The problem with socialism isn’t the inefficiency; it’s the evil.”

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The Prince of Darkness Sold It to Me

I know it’s hard to look evil square in the face and acknowledge it’s real. We like to think of evil as something confined in history books or tucked away in some remote place far from us. Interestingly, most people equate the name Hitler with the deadliest form of evil. But even Hitler’s murderous reign of terror doesn’t come close to communism’s body count. Paul Kengor puts it this way:

In fact, neither did the two deadliest wars in history, World Wars I and II, which need to be combined and doubled to get near communism’s butcher’s bill. The highest estimates of death produced during the entirety of the Spanish Inquisition (a period of some sixty years) come nowhere near the level of death in Stalin’s military purge or even Lenin’s first year in power.[iv]

Interestingly, most people equate the name Hitler with the deadliest form of evil. But even Hitler’s murderous reign of terror doesn’t come close to communism’s body count.

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As more history comes to light, it’s increasingly clear that communism’s titular founder, Karl Marx, was demon-possessed. His own family and friends referred to him as “governed by a demon,” “possessed,” and as “a monster of ten thousand devils.” And he was oddly fond of writing darkly religious poetry for someone supposedly guided by sheer atheism. Consider this poem by Marx called The Player:

“Look now, my blood-dark sword shall stab
Unerringly within thy soul…
The hellish vapors rise and fill the brain,
Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed.
See the sword – the Prince of Darkness sold it to me.
For he beats the time and gives the signs.
Ever more boldly I play the dance of death."[v]

As more history comes to light, it’s increasingly clear that communism’s titular founder, Karl Marx, was demon-possessed. His own family and friends referred to him as “governed by a demon,” “possessed,” and as “a monster of ten thousand devils.”

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The Courage to Confront

Michael Knowles, albeit unknowingly, prophetically summarized the current crises best:

The Evil Empire collapsed, but evil spirits continue to prowl about the earth seeking the ruin of souls because we contend in the end not against flesh and blood but against the spirits of wickedness in the high places, which will endure until the end of the world.[vi]

My point is not merely to decry the evils of communism, although I’d happily do that for hours on end; more importantly, I’m attempting to call us away from the self-inflicted ignorance of evil. Whether it’s a result of complacency, distraction, denial, simplistic naivety, or an “it’s not my problem” mentality. The thing about the “it’s not my problem” philosophy is that it’s not your problem yet. In his most famous Cold War speech Ronald Reagan quoting the infamous Sir Winston Churchill, said, “The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we’re spirits, not animals.” There’s a special kind of spiritual transcendence or religious awakening that can only be obtained by confronting the forces of malevolence head-on. And that process begins by mustering the courage to acknowledge the stark reality of evil and having the maturity to reckon with the fact that the problem of evil isn’t everybody else’s concern.

The thing about the “it’s not my problem” philosophy is that it’s not your problem yet.

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There’s a special kind of spiritual transcendence that can only be obtained by confronting the forces of malevolence head-on. That begins by having the maturity to reckon with the fact that the problem of evil isn’t everybody else’s concern.

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Sober & Vigilant

I’m not a war hawk. This isn’t meant to be a call to physical arms. I pray we’re not on the verge of World War III. I understand the United States shouldn’t be eager to fight even wars that would be morally good to fight. However, this is a call to spiritual arms. I’m sounding the alarm! We cannot be ignorant of the signs or the seasons. There’s more happening here than meets the eye. Prophecy is unfolding at the speed of light. I’m pleading with my brothers and sisters to be sober and vigilant. Put on the whole armor of God. Petty problems and silly past distractions must be discarded in the face of genuine evil.

“Therefore, let us not sleep, as do others, but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:6-9).”

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[i] Kengor, Paul, and Michael J. Knowles. 2020. The devil and Karl Marx: communism’s long march of death, deception, and infiltration. 7.

[ii] Ibid., x.

[iii] Ibid., xv.

[iv] Ibid., xix.

[v] Ibid., 39.

[vi] Ibid., xi