This year, it’s been 200 years since Karl Marx came into the world on the 5th of May 1818, yet in 2018, he has never been so popular.

At the time of his death you would be forgiven for thinking that his influence would be relegated to the dustbin of history, considering that only 9 people turned up at his funeral. Yet, two centuries later he is celebrated by the press, championed by mainstream politicians and the dominant figure on our university campuses.

Four years ago, Rolling Stone magazine audaciously published the article “Marx Was Right: Five Surprising Ways Karl Marx Predicted 2014”, then four years later followed up with the infamous hit piece from the New York Times entitled, “Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!”. Both of these articles, although aberrant to conservatives, seemed to chime with the contemporary leanings of American culture to the left.

Last year, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn of the UK Labour Party described Karl Marx as a “great economist”, and earlier this year, Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission attended a celebration marking the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth while delivering ‘an impassioned speech praising the legacy of the German philosopher’.

In Western academia, you would be hard pressed to find a university that isn’t teaching Marx’s political doctrine within their humanities department. In America, books on America’s Founding Fathers and classical Western literature are out, and books on Marxist philosophers and thinkers are in.

How did the man behind the political philosophy that led to the deaths of over 100 million people in the 20th century, become the most celebrated posthumous political figure in the 21st century?

Well, this was certainly not achieved by his own merit, but via millions of his devoted followers. Despite what history has demonstrated, these disciples of Marx were undeterred and enamoured with his utopian vision of a classless, egalitarian society.

Despite the many set backs, two hundred years after the birth of Karl Marx, there are more socialist/communist countries in the world today than there ever has been, with more socialist/communist party members in the world today than there ever has been.

Even in the most freest, pro-capitalist nation in the world — the United States — we find enormous support for Socialist policies, especially from the Democrat Party. So much so, that one of the front runners in the lead up to the Democrat Party presidential primary nomination was Bernie Sanders, an avowed “Democratic Socialist”. In fact, if it wasn’t for Hillary Clinton rigging the primary results, it would’ve been Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist that would’ve contested the Presidential election with Donald Trump in 2016.

Last week, we saw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year old socialist, secure an upset victory in the Democratic primary in New York. She is a card carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and advocates for open borders, abolishing ICE, gun control, universal income and expansion of Medicare into a universal healthcare system.

To top it all off, it was just seven years ago, when the Socialist Party of America released the names of 70 Democrat members of Congress who are members of their caucus.

If you haven’t been sleeping under a rock, you would have noticed that America is in the midst of a colossal culture war between the conservative right and the “progressive” liberal (Marxist) left, that only seems to be intensifying with each passing year. How on earth did it come to this?

What we are seeing happening in America now, is the result of 60 years of hard-fought political action by a tiny minority of very well organized radical activists. To explain how and why it happened, one must first examine political history from over a hundred years ago, beginning with Karl Marx.

In 1848, Marx, along with Friedrich Engels, wrote the book “The Communist Manifesto”, in which he said that in order for the revolution to come, there must first be ‘class warfare’. He encouraged class warfare by getting the “proletariat” (working-class people) to rise up against the privileged “bourgeoisie” (the well-off capitalist class who owned most of society’s wealth and means of production). He was basically pitting the ‘oppressed’ verses ‘the oppressor’, by instilling a mentality of victimhood in the ‘oppressed’ (the proletariats).

In neo-Marxist theory (aka Cultural Marxism) class warfare is substituted for minority group warfare. This was a stroke of genius, as people would never fight for their class, but they would fight over their culture, especially if it was tied up in their identity.

This deviation from traditional Marxist theory was the brainchild of Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, further developed by Hungarian Communist György Lukács and then weaponized and exported to America’s leading universities via Herbert Marcuse and other academics from the Frankfurt School.

The proletariat (working class) has been replaced by the minority groups (LGBT, feminists, BLM, Islam, etc.) and the bourgeoisie (ruling class) has been replaced by the established social norms of Western society (the nuclear family, the white race, Christianity, etc).

The Left want massive centralized state power (in other words, BIG government) in order to force equality to all aspects of society. They can get government to expand via two ways. Firstly, they achieve it by creating victims, who look to a leftist government for their rights; and secondly, they achieve it by creating chaos in society by breaking down the family and the government expands by default to clean up the mess.

Let’s look firstly at their strategy in creating victims.

Marxist “equality” is a loaded term that is a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing. On the surface it appears to offer “fairness” and “social justice”, but in reality is nefarious ploy to get people to lobby the government to grant them “rights” and “special privileges” (rights and privileges that are usually invented out of thin air) and hence government expands in the process. Marxists understand that the only way possible for “equality” to be implemented onto a society is if government is empowered to do it.

They know full well, that if they can create victims, rub the sore red by aggravating the so-called “injustice” of their victimhood, and then preach that only they can provide the solution to their injustice, the victims will always look to them for giving them the so-called “rights” they crave and will vote LEFT for life.

When the majority of people in a society all look to the government for “rights” and “privileges”, the individual freedom ebbs away and society inevitably heads toward enslavement. Consequently, as Reagan said, “As government expands, freedom contracts.” and hence freedom is sacrificed on the altar of “equality”. And inevitably, as Paul Kersey puts it, “When equality is considered the greatest goal of a nation state, it won’t be a nation state for long.”

Secondly, they achieve their strategy by creating chaos in society and then government must expand as a solution to the chaos—and what no better chaos than by exacerbating the breakdown of the family unit.

Breaking down the family unit was a primary goal in Marxist strategy. Marriage was “private prostitution”, wrote Marx. Engels called for the abolition of the family, and the collective rearing of children, describing a wife as “a slave of (her husband’s) lust and a mere instrument for the production of children”.

This anti-family ideology was adopted with gusto by the post-revolutionary Soviets who passed decrees in 1917, which made divorce easy, recognized only civil marriages, abolished shared family property and banned adoption. In 1918 courts took over parental rights. “True liberation of women, true Communism comes about only when the masses rise up … against … small-scale households,” wrote Lenin in 1919.

Unfortunately, you will find these ideas in every feminism and gender studies course in American universities today. But you probably won’t find their real-life consequences, which were catastrophic for Russian society.

And what better way to destroy the family unit than by indoctrinating impressionable young people into the LGBT lifestyle. Radical LGBT indoctrination is now sold on the lie of being “Sex Ed” in American public schools, yet the true goal is to indoctrinate them into the LGBT lifestyle, destroy the bond between the child and his/her parents and ultimately breakdown the patriarchal family unit, which they utterly despise. Of course, government has to expand in its powers to pick up the pieces of destroyed families and socially dysfunctional individuals. They create the chaos, then they step in as a solution to the chaos.

Capturing America’s educational institution was one of the top priorities of the cultural Marxists during the 1950’s and 60’s, and now 70 years later, you will be hard pressed to find one conservative on the faculty of any college in America. Political commentator Dinesh D’Souza echoed this concern when he said, “Today, there are probably more Marxists on the faculty of our elite colleges than there are in all of Russia and Eastern Europe.” And as of late last year, a poll found that nearly half of American millennials (44 percent) would rather live in a socialist society than a capitalist one.

Consequentially, millennials have come to hate American culture, patriotism, free enterprise, marriage, the tradition family, Christianity, and are so utterly focused upon only one thing: themselves. This is why it should not take us by surprise that a full-blown socialist government will be inevitable within the next ten to fifteen years — and it was all purposeful, all intentional, all planned.

The leading Marxists and LGBT activists understand full well that their plan is to radically transform American society to the point where sex, gender and language are completely redefined. And yet, in doing so, have created a society intensely hostile to Christians. Christians in America are increasingly finding it difficult to live out their faith in the public square.

Christians are being hounded out of business, hounded off college campuses, hounded off the sports field, hounded out of the media, hounded out of the military — and heaven forbid — even hounded out of the church. There has never been a time in America when Christianity has been so much under attack.

Yet, the great chasm between conservatives and liberals is only going to get more polarized in the days ahead. Currently, liberals are demonizing Christians, but the time will soon come when they will go from demonizing them to dehumanizing them. Then persecution is going to get very real and personal.

So how did America get here? If there was ever a Bible verse appropriate for America right now, it would be Hosea 13:5-6. “I cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of burning heat. When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.”

America has forgotten its rich Christian heritage and history. It has replaced the God of the Bible for the god of mammon. It has substituted the justice of Moses for the social justice of Marx. It has rejected objective moral values in favor of political correctness. And now, tragically, it is scorning the American Revolution in favor of a socialist revolution.

Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn summed up the primary reason for the human carnage wrought by the Soviets which he had witnessed first hand. He said, “More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened. Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

No matter how much we would like to see America become ‘great again’, it will never happen if it remains unrepentant. The degree to which America becomes great again is directly proportionate to its willingness to repent. Alexis de Tocqueville once said, “America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

How right he was — as Proverbs 14:34 says, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people.”

I consider myself to be optimistic in my outlook, however, I do not see America’s future boding well if it continues in the current trajectory (see short video segment below). My sentiment echoes that of Thomas Jefferson who said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

The great British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee said, “Of the twenty-two civilisations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.”

I believe Billy Graham was right in his assessment of the moral condition of the United States when he said, “If God were to excuse America for her sins, he would have to apologise to Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, also echoed this sentiment when he said, “As a nation we’ve become desensitized to the value of human life. That’s also evidenced in the 60 million children whose lives have been ended through abortion in this country since 1973. My prayer is that America will wake up before it’s too late—God’s judgment is coming.”

Will America be judged by God wholesale? Yes and no. I believe parts of America will bear the brunt of God’s judgment while other parts will be spared. That said, we cannot escape the reality that America is going to face chastisement. Yet, we must never lose sight of the bigger picture. America’s fall—whether it be suddenly or gradually—would be a major event in allowing end times scenarios to proceed.

When we see these things happen, no matter how discouraging it looks in the natural, we need to stand up and lift up our heads, because our redemption is drawing near.

This article is an excerpt taken from Daniel Secomb’s up-and-coming new book The Politics of the Last Days.