By James M. Rochford

The book of Revelation claims that a global government will eventually reign over all of humanity. John writes, “It was also given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them, and authority over every tribe and people and tongue and nation was given to him. ⁸All who dwell on the earth will worship him” (Rev. 13:7-8). For years, this passage seemed absolutely impossible: How could one man be in charge of the entire world? Historically, world governments have been so set on independence that this seemed utterly fantastic to believe. However, this skepticism has radically changed in recent years for a number of reasons:

REASON #1: Global problems demand a global solution

As we have already seen, the problems ahead of us in the modern era are global in nature: (1) ecological catastrophes, (2) over-population, (3) food shortage, and (4) disease. Thus in order to solve these problems, we would need a stronger and more centralized global government. Experts are well aware of these conclusions. For instance, Jorgen Randers writes,

All in all this will mean bigger government in the decades head: a larger role for the state, higher taxes, and a larger share of investments in the GDP.^[1]

The prime example is the climate challenge. It is a truly global problem; the temperature will rise everywhere, irrespective of who was the source of the emissions. And it is a truly long-term problem: the temperature will not react (that is, deviate from its current path) until thirty years after the initiation of the effort (as long as that effort is of realistic proportions). Such truly global, truly long-term problems are hard to solve if one restricts oneself to using the powers of the ‘free’ market only.^[2]

Meadows and Randers write,

There must be technological advance, and personal change, and longer planning horizons. There must be greater respect, caring, and sharing across political boundaries. This will take decades to achieve even under the best of circumstances.^[3]

Held and McGrew write,

Humankind faces an unprecedented array of truly global and regional environmental problems, the reach of which is greater than any single national community (or generation) and the solutions to which cannot be tackled at the level of the nation-state alone. Over the twentieth century these transformations have been paralleled by the unprecedented growth of global and regional environmental movements, regimes and international treaties. However, none of these institutions has as yet been able to amass sufficient political power, domestic support or international authority to do more than limit the worst excesses of some of these global environmental threats.^[4]

REASON #2: The emergence of global powers that fit with the Bible’s predictions

Consider a few of these below:

The European Union (EU): Europe used to be devastated with warfare and genocide. This led to a desire for world peace. The first presence was the League of Nations. This was too passive, and it couldn’t stop the Second World War. The United Nations (UN) replaced the League of Nations, exerting more authority. However, the common complaint about the UN is that they are too weak to accomplish anything. Eventually, the need for protection will lead to higher control in these world unions.

Emergence of China. China used to be largely agrarian, closed, and “backward” by Western standards. Today, they are one of the strongest world powers.

Emergence of Arab presence set against Israel. The world never saw such a presence, because Israel didn’t exist. This has changed in the last half century.

REASON #3: Economic pressures will collectively push humanity toward a global government

In 1974, Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Muller argued,

The men who run the global corporations are the first in history with the organization, technology, money, and ideology to make a credible try at managing the world as an integrated economic unit… What they are demanding in essence is the right to transcend the nation-state, and in the process, transform it.^[5]

In 1995, economist Dave Korten wrote,

The past two decades have seen the most rapid and sweeping institutional transformation in human history. It is a conscious and intentional transformation in search of a new world economic order in which business has no nationality and knows no borders.^[6]

[We see the] lowering all economic barriers between North America, Europe, and Japan—trade, investment, legal, and so forth—in order to begin creating the nucleus of a new world economic order that would include a harmonized world business system with agreed rules and procedures that transcend national boundaries.^[8]

In the same year, Barnet and Cavanagh wrote,

Given the present state of the world, [the world urgently needs] global political norms, global economic rules of conduct, a global legal order, and effective global authorities to undertake preventive diplomacy, the settlement of disputes, the containment of war, and the enforcement of peace.^[9]

By default, business enterprises are wielding political power in many important ways… Economic ties across national borders have become so strong, so deep, and so complex that political leaders can no longer make successful use of traditional strategies to deal with such problems as unemployment, ecological deterioration, and the corrosive effects of chronic poverty.^[10]

More recently in 2006, Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel Prize winning economist, former chief economist of the World Bank, and professor at Columbia) writes,

We need …international frameworks and international courts—as necessary for the smooth functioning of the global economy as federal courts and national laws are for national economies… Globalization means that events in one part of the world have ripple effects elsewhere, as ideas and knowledge, goods and services, and capital and people move more easily across borders… As the countries of the world become more closely integrated, they become more interdependent. Greater interdependence gives rise to a greater need for collective action to solve common problems… As the world becomes more globalized, more integrated, there will be more and more areas in which there are opportunities for cooperative action, and in which such collective action is not only desirable but necessary… In effect, economic globalization has outpaced political globalization. We have a chaotic, uncoordinated system of global governance without global government… There is a clear need for strong international institutions to deal with the challenges posed by economic globalization; yet today confidence in existing institutions is weak.^[11]

Since then, these predictions have only come into fuller focus. Today the world’s economic lines are tighter than ever, and this leads us to predict that national and political ties would only grow stronger as a result.

Go back to article: “Predictions of the End of Human History”