Joel Geier writes that most of the time people are loath to rise up against an oppressive government. Instead, they find it much more expedient to adapt to existing conditions, even very bad ones. They feel powerless; they don't think they can change things. Add to that the fact that there are not many true revolutionaries in the world - and the few who actually exist are considered unrealistic utopians and are, as a result, marginalized - and it is easy to see why revolution (even a bloodless one; even one achieved through "constitutional" means) is a path seldom chosen by most people.

"The people" are warned away from the very few revolutionaries that exist. They are told that if they join themselves to these utopians and dreamers, they too will find themselves marginalized and "cut-off" from all that passes as "conventional" and "established" in this life. So give the idea of revolution up; forget it, relax, enjoy your life - or what there exists of it; that's the best you can hope for.

As I look around today - even among those who are biblically oriented and seem to genuinely grasp what's happening insofar as the unfolding events of the "end of the age" are concerned - I am UTTERLY appalled at how ill-prepared people are both psychologically and spiritually for what awaits them. There seems to be no way to get through to people; to convince them that NOW is the time for action; not tomorrow, nor the next day, nor the day after that.

Most Christians today seem to be helpless prisoners of the "here and now," and though from time to time they may be "discomposed" by a particular calamity or series of events that augurs for the "end of the age," once the commotion of the event dies down, they tend to gravitate back to their old habits of doing things and their old ways of thinking. Isn't that exactly what's happened since the destruction of New Orleans by Katrina, and the 9.2 temblor in the Indian Ocean in 2005? - events that killed 300,000 people in south Asia, and destroyed one of America's premier cities.

In May of last year (2007) I wrote:

"There are periods when time seems to go into slow motion; when great and contradictory forces that are battling against one another seem to abate - though not completely; just enough to give people a sense that time is on their side; that the emergency they had sensed was about to explode upon them has diminished to the extent that they can begin to relax a little.

"This is what happened in Germany between September 1930 - when the Nazis won a surprising victory in the elections of that year, a victory that seemed to presage their immediate ascent to power - and January 1933 when the Nazis finally seized power once and for all; an interval of about two and a half years; an interval that no one had expected.

"Four different governments and several elections were to take place in this short period of time, and each time the position the Nazis had achieved in the 1930 election was eroded. Indeed, one month before the final ascent of the Nazis to power, the Communists and their pseudo-allies, the Social Democrats, held more seats in the Reichstag (the German Parliament) than the Nazis did. IT SEEMED THAT THE NAZI PARTY WAS A SPENT FORCE."