The Great American Backslide and Our Silent Partnership with Darkness: Living in Opposition to Evil's Influence

By M. Rene Lauzier

Change is accelerating and the world of 2023 is unrecognizable from the world that existed just five years ago. In a very subtle and incremental manner, American society has been transformed from what once was the world's premiere super-power, a country that was exalted as an example of freedom, justice, morality, and liberty, into a divided group of many tribes, cultures, and political and special interest groups often lacking a moral compass. We go with the loudest tribe fitting our basic ideals or choose to go it alone. And when we try to avoid the many tribes of destruction, we often tend to adopt the idol of the god of self. Community and unity are being left to die a slow, painful death.

America's true north has become obscured because we decided to forego God as the light for our path. This has allowed us to quickly forget the race worth running as well as those foundational values that once comprised what we stood for as a country. But how did we get here and how can the trend of moral decay and divisiveness be reversed? The Great American Backslide came about as a result of not just understanding that our natural tendency as humans is to be selfish and sinful, but knowing we are being given substantial assistance by the dominion of darkness. This book will take us through an analysis of biblical, secular, and non-secular explanations of the existence of evil; how it induces cultural paradigm shifts aimed to ultimately separate us from God; how evil leverages our emotions, our brain chemistry, and our sinful human nature to manipulate subtle and incremental compromises of truth; how evil sustains itself and creates ever-increasing moral decay leading to further evil through a cycle of depravity; and how we can go about living in opposition to evil influences upon our world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9798891121720

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

The Works of the Evil One

Chapter 1: Cancelled by Twitter

Chapter 2: Sarx Sucks

Chapter 3: The Devil in the Details

Chapter 4: The Power of Supernatural Suck

Don't Blame the Devil

Chapter 5: The Cancel Culture Paradigm and Tribes of Destruction

Chapter 6: Don't Hate on Haidt, He Didn't Write the Rules

Chapter 7: The King of the Cancel Culture

Chapter 8: The Truth Deniers

Identifying Paradigm Shifts and Our Response to Evil Schemes

Chapter 9: The Standard Isn't the Standard

Chapter 10: The Depravity Cycle—Satanic Methods of Eternal Standards Destruction

Chapter 11: Our Silent Partnership with Darkness

Chapter 12: Living in Opposition to Evil's Influence

Conclusion

Bibliography

About the Author

Notes

cover.jpg

The Great American Backslide and Our Silent Partnership with Darkness

Living in Opposition to Evil's Influence

M. Rene Lauzier

ISBN 979-8-89112-171-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89112-172-0 (Digital)

Copyright © 2024 M. Rene Lauzier

All rights reserved

First Edition

Scripture quotations marked ESV® are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version used by gratis permission policy of © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. https://www.crossway.org/permissions/

Scripture quotations marked NIV® are from the Holy Bible, New International Version used by gratis permission policy of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.zondervan.com/about-us/permissions/#permissionquoteNIV

Please note that the endnotes in this book may contain internet URL addresses to websites (either by hyperlinks or in the printed version) that cannot be verified as active or accurate beyond the date of publication.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

To Karen, Lauren, Adam, Sue, Bob, and the entire Bloch and Lauzier families on this side of heaven as well as those who have gone home to eternity.

Acknowledgments

The God Squad was a term used to refer to a local group of religious leaders who were working God's agenda in a city that I once served in. They must have prayed for me and some of it stuck to me because I didn't believe in the Lord when I met them. I have no doubt that they all endured horrible treatment in the furnace of affliction as a reward for their sacrifices for God's kingdom. I pray for God's blessings and provision in all the God Squads around the country now serving the kingdom in the churches they shepherd and in the public sphere in general.

A special thank you to those who have sowed, planted, watered, pruned, and fertilized my spiritual growth through all forms of teaching, prayer, and spiritual support as I continue to learn to walk in the Lord's ways:

Senior Pastor Gary Hamrick, Cornerstone Chapel, Leesburg, VA

Pastor Austin Hamrick, Cornerstone Chapel, Leesburg, VA

Pastor Tyler Hamrick, Cornerstone Chapel, Leesburg, VA

Senior Pastor Mike Wiggins, Calvary Chapel Port St. Lucie, Port St. Lucie, FL

Senior Pastor Bill Mitchell, Boca Raton Community Church, Boca Raton, FL

Senior Pastor Rev. Dr. Howard B. Barr Jr., St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, Delray Beach, FL

Senior Pastor Michael White, Harbor Covenant Church, Gig Harbor, WA

Senior Pastor David Hughes, Church by the Glades, Coral Springs, FL

Senior Pastor Rev. Robert Stanley, Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church, Pompano Beach, FL

Author, Leadership Expert, and former Senior Pastor John C. Maxwell, Injoy, Inc.

Author and Pastor Dr. John M. Perkins, Perkins Center at Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA

I also want to provide a shout of thanks to the following servant leaders who have gone through it themselves and entered the spiritual battleground of the cancel culture with me: Dorothy Burton, India Adams-Jacobs, Antwon Jacobs, Michael Coleman, Jamael Stewart, Vincent Roberts, Shona Smith, Nora Emmanuel, and Susan Grant. Most of them just happened to be in blast-zone of the hate bomb that was targeting me.

Finally, I want to pray blessings upon all the faithful working or residing in any stronghold of evil and for all the saints waging war on the unseen spiritual battlefields of America's cities. This book could never have been written without you all, and especially not without God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and to him all honor and glory.

Preface

They say there are only two types of city managers, those who have been fired and those who will be fired. For the CEOs, these periods of unemployment are euphemistically called being in transition by industry standard parlance. That said, there are numerous faithful employees in public service at all levels who have undergone unplanned periods of unemployment. And no matter what your title or position of service to our nation is, my prayers go out to you.

This book was written for all believers, not just those who are walking in the ways of our Lord in local government service. The truth is a believer's troubles are more than likely occurring because you matter—every single one of God's children does. To all my brothers in Christ who have taught me along the way, know that God will turn the efforts of the dominion of darkness into lessons of refinement for your spiritual victory. You may not understand who and how, but God will turn your fiery hell into spiritual victory. Thank you for your guidance my fellow warriors! You have no idea how you have poured the message of "encourage in truth" into me!

Finally, to encourage in truth every follower of Christ on this earth, you will one day see the inexpressible joy that is the result of your refinement. Undergoing your refinement in the furnace of affliction is not a matter of if, it's a matter of when and how. But you cannot be cancelled by the cancel culture. God will take the attack and turn it around for good because God has created you to do something very special for him.¹ To the Lord my God and to your future spiritual victory I dedicate this book.

Introduction

In the year 2020, we experienced the dual destructive forces of a pandemic combined with racially motivated rioting leading to anarchy and governmental ineffectiveness in cities like Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. In both examples, government officials actually abandoned public property and allowed anarchy to temporarily reign. There is no good that can come from governmental complicity with anarchists destroying property owned by everyone. Regardless of your political viewpoints, since when is it better to allow chaos and anarchy to reign in the public square? More importantly, how do those activities gauge the spiritual condition of America?

It is the spirit of evil, Satan, who confounds politicians to the point they believe chaos is okay because he has rendered them totally ineffective through fear. Fear that someone may not like restoring law and order and/or fear that they may be held personally accountable for the outcomes of their decisions. America is not onboard with disorder. Not the America that I subscribe to. Unfortunately, it's now okay to remove reason and rational thought from the equation and be a coward if there is fear that a community decision will get half the people upset.

This is indicative of a country that is extremely polarized. When we operate as if there is no correct answer, only the anarchists are represented when we allow civil disobedience to foment hate and division. These are but minor victories for the dominion of darkness from which God has rescued us.² Unfortunately, there is probably much more to come from Satan's playbook.

In addition to anarchy, the uncontrolled fear of politicians demonstrated by the emergency use authorization (EUA) of probably unsafe mRNA vaccines, at least as far as the numbers portray, was indicative of five major fails: (1) the arrogance of the drug manufacturers and their inadequate clinical trials; (2) the cowardice of scientists who may have known better or just didn't say anything for fear of their jobs; (3) the corruption of our federal regulatory bodies to ensure safety that has been long compromised due to incestual relationships with Big Pharma (regulatory capture); (4) heightened FOMO (fear of missing out) by most state and local governmental leaders who fell into line regarding masks, lockdowns, and shots through a herd mentality; and (5) the complicit individual response regarding the acceptance and use of mRNA vaccine technology for which waiver of a patient rights for injury recourse was a prerequisite.

But it's worse than we think. During the vaccine propaganda campaign, one of the companies involved (Moderna) published the following graphic:³

What the company failed to discern, due to their giddiness caused by the potential that trillions of dollars in future profits could result, was that the concept of manipulating an immune response from our human DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) storage system, while likening messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) to programmable software, in reference to the human body created by God went way beyond the traditional methods of vaccination. When I saw this graphic, the whole idea went Orwellian very quickly in my mind. They were likening the technology to the ability to program a machine.

Comparing God's creation to a machine is satanic. It portrays people as programmable machines as if human beings are computers whose software applications need upgrading. And what can be programmed can be reprogrammed by the programmer. This could very well be the precursor to transhumanism on a global scale. These types of statements and ideas chip away at our humanity ever so discretely and incrementally. Satan has centuries to reach his objectives.

The global pandemic response plan lacked thoughtfulness and deliberation. It was proffered by people with knowledge but no understanding or wisdom. To me, it not only lacked any level of spiritual understanding but exuded complete blindness. Acceptance of such a novel vaccination approach while failing to have concerns after it was assigned military resources so that it could be messaged as a virtuous all-hands-on-deck war effort via a narrative entitled Operation Warp Speed put my spirit on high alert. Yes, I have a healthy dose of skepticism, but my gut, the conscience that God provided me, told me to run like hell. There is always a way out.

The not-so-innocent end result was the worldwide endorsement of extreme solutions and the outsourcing of thinking to national and global authorities.⁴ This is what the power of Supernatural Suck does. It is an unrecognizable, corrupting, evil influence in opposition to God. Once the dust settles and the truth emerges in the fruit,⁵ the global pandemic response will likely be proven to have done more harm than good. It is starting to emerge as the best example of Supernatural Suck during my lifetime since it appears to have achieved complete corruption at the systemic level within all parts of the super-system of world health.

But as the world slumbers and continues its backslide, corrupt human beings will avoid any accountability by assigning systemic responsibility to machines. This allows them to mask the motivating forces of power, control, and money that determine their actions so they cannot be linked to the ensuing destruction. They cannot be held accountable because it was the machine that did it. They will claim it was the machine that cancelled our First Amendment rights, not the logarithm or those who program the programmers. The scripts of social engineering that extract power, control, and wealth from the world are turning the masses into rubes of total obedience through their own ignorance.

If the preceding graphic doesn't indicate to you that they consider you a machine that is worthy only of being led by a machine, you are not seeing what is happening. Fall in line, comrade, and welcome to the Hegelian dialectic. You are part of the machine, you are not accountable, you just need to listen to the big machine, and the big machine will take care of everything.

Change is accelerating, and the world of 2023 is unrecognizable from the world that existed just five years ago. It is abundantly clear that great change is in store for this world for the remainder of this decade during the years 2024–2030. But will a future generation many decades from now be classifying the USA of 2030 as a backward culture that bought into or conversely resisted the global direction of a world under various powers and authorities that we do not currently understand? Is it a good idea or bad idea for America to be transformed by a global society's beliefs, practices, and moral values?

The challenge in answering these questions depends upon perspective, but more importantly on whether or not we can recognize societal evil. In cases of unusual death and destruction caused by depraved leaders, recognizing societal evil is pretty easy. Like when we see things like genocide, extreme oppression, intentional starvation, and human torture. When death and destruction present obvious violations of the Law of Nature, the Law of Human Nature, the Law of Right and Wrong, whichever C. S. Lewis term suits you best. It is easy to classify such behaviors as pure evil, upon which everyone agrees.

It is a given that dominant societies will eventually fail because they are run by fallible humans. We all falter to varying levels individually as far as morality is concerned. But there's an indicator of a much bigger problem in the observation of a widespread societal backslide. America's backslide demonstrates a culture completely oblivious to the possibility of evil influences upon the paths that we are taking as a society in general. How is it that a society can reach the point of becoming evil without even understanding that it is happening to them? The challenge questions I seek to answer in this book are:

How does the influence of evil induce cultural paradigm shifts aimed to ultimately separate us from God and cause further division and destruction in the United States of America?

How does evil leverage our emotions and our sinful human nature to manipulate subtle and incremental compromises of truth?

How does pure evil reach a critical mass as far as societal influence? Stated similarly, how does evil sustain itself and create ever-increasing evil?

And, most importantly, how can we live in opposition to evil influences upon our world?

Death, destruction, and genocide are occurring in our world today and are not just bad historical events of days gone by. But it is fear, confusion, and the battle for truth that are the modern-day harbingers of death and destruction. Yet, in the aftermath of historical events of an evil nature in our past, we often fail to identify key causative factors. This is because seeing what is happening requires spiritual discernment.

If you do not understand good and where it comes from, you will never be able to understand evil and where it comes from. We must understand evil's subtleties before we can ever hope to counter its destructiveness. This book offers observations to help us identify and counter the efforts of today's dark influencers who are intent on creating systemic conditions that destroy the moral foundations upon which civilization may stand against evil. When the foundation is gone, the walls cannot be supported, and a once great civilization will be easily overcome.

The United States of America was blessed by God, and many believe we were once the only nation that stood in the way of global evil. Unfortunately, the United States and its citizens, both as individual human beings and as a country as a whole, a country that undoubtedly has global influence, are in the midst of a current Great American Backslide. This is not happenstance. It is part of Evil Incorporated's plan. We can stick our heads in the sand and be ignorant to how it all works or we can seek to understand and be vigilant in identifying exactly what is happening to us. Rationalizing inaction only ensures our own ignorance and eventual destruction. Adopting an "it could be a lot worse than it is" attitude only guarantees that it will be a lot worse. It's time for the watchmen to blow their trumpets!

To my fellow citizens of the United States and kingdom of God, please stop attempting to adapt and adopt the ways of the world because what you permit, you promote. The world no longer shares America's ideals that are currently being attacked by dark forces that desire to destroy America's core competencies, which involve projecting freedom, liberty, democracy, and justice by being salt, light, and love in a dark world. Unfortunately, we have reached the point in this world that anything that hints of God is under attack by evil.

To all of America and the rest of the world, the common thread of truth once shared by all of the many and ever-expanding groups in America was belief in and trust in God. Our platform was love. Our teacher was Jesus. We were never fearful nor panic-stricken, even when faced with future uncertainty because there is no fear in love.⁶ We just got it done. So how about we stop being a large group of dozens if not hundreds of tribal philosophies and cultures that individually are easily overtaken by deception and lies because of our lack of a common bond or thread? We are unstable when we are not guided by a common moral foundation that places God first, with family and country right behind him. Having God and his standards at the forefront allows everything else to fall in place. This is what makes us great.

This book is not about who nor is it an attack on beliefs, philosophies, or political agendas. It is about how. What are the means and methods that are causing the current Great American Backslide? The biggest question on my mind is whether this great backslide will lead to the next Great Revival? But that is a topic I cannot speak to nor can I provide much about spiritual conditions in countries in which I have no experience.

How another Great Awakening will start is a mystery to me. That is not my focus nor is it my focus to merely take the good and say that the message of the Bible is love. Undoubtedly, that is the truth. But aside from the primary message of the love of God, we must also understand that we have an evil adversary. What is happening in our world today should invoke the trumpets of today's prophets, evangelists, and pastors to be sounded loudly. We tend to forget about the dark side of the spiritual realm and how it influences our world. We adjust our behaviors so that we can skip that reality and make it fit into the rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns' false narrative. Living for and in concert with the kingdom of God means hardship for the believer.

What the Bible also teaches us is that all human beings are potential catalysts of destruction by inadvertently assisting the dark agenda of evil due to our sinful nature. Sometimes standing by idly as the world descends into darkness is the equivalent of contributing to evil. We do this by erasing and/or adjusting moral eternal standards that matter based upon today's worldly standards. Spiritual blindness hinders our ability to see both God and evil. There are, however, some human beings who knowingly and willfully act upon their evil inclinations, becoming Evil Inc.'s coconspirators through many emotional, psychological, and social means and methods.

Herein lies the challenge that we all find very hard to comprehend, assuming that people are inherently evil is a pretty negative perception that represents a condemning condition of mankind. But isn't that also true as far as God is concerned? If we understand that, we will begin to see that Satan is using his evil influence upon this world to get us all to a state in which our evil inclinations supersede our conscience in every aspect of life.

I had to see evil operate with extreme precision and coordination through personal experience to actually believe the very hard truth that the core of human nature is evil. I mistakenly held a belief for most of my life that people were good by nature unless they've been captured by evil. It is actually the opposite. We are evil by nature, and that is defined by the standards of an infinitely just, merciful and Holy God, until we are captured by good. We downplay our evil nature.

We say that all human beings are sinful by nature. It sounds better and makes it a little easier to stomach. But even that downplay doesn't resonate with the world at any substantial level. The world says we are good enough. God says something very different.

Secularists study human nature, psychiatry, psychology, social anthropology, and can certainly help us identify scientific explanations for human behavior. Interestingly, both the secular and non-secular schools of thought are actually pretty congruent with one another in their assessment of humans. They merely approach the truth from different perspectives and underlying causalities. But only one group attempts to approach the explanations about human behavior from an absolute truth perspective. They are often unsuccessful because they leave things out, and that is generally the concept of total depravity. No one wants to hear it.

I did not previously believe that all human beings were evil until I read the truth about our innate behaviors. Because I was still reluctant to believe that we gravitate toward evil influencers, I sought to find out for myself by undertaking extensive research of both a secular and non-secular nature. This is what seekers of the truth do.

In Genesis 6:5, God the Father stated, "The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time." Every inclination of our thoughts leans toward evil. Really? The God of truth does not sugarcoat human nature, which makes it exceedingly hard to concur when staring into the mirror. I initially wasn't so sure I could buy into his assessment of me that I am evil by nature in my heart. That really hurts