Stand Fast in the Truth

February 5

"For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying Peace, Peace; when there is no peace." Jeremiah 8:11

Soft Tyranny

Alexis de Tocqueville defines soft tyranny in his book Democracy in America, Volume II (1840) as: "After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community.

“It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.

“The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting.

“Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."



The nations about which de Tocqueville wrote are a far cry today from what they were when he wrote of them. They are so different from those he knew that he would not recognize them if he saw them now, but he would see his insights unfolding.

Because we are inching our way toward the world system that will be the government of the antichirist, our course toward that evil regime must be dotted with the brokenness of men’s attempts to govern. Whether they be theocracies or kingdoms or democracies, all man’s efforts must come to nothing.

The only system that will endure forever is that which is built upon the truth of Jesus Christ. As Jesus said when Peter declared Him to be the Christ, the long awaited Messiah, “Heaven has revealed this to you and upon this rock I shall build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” Matthew 16:18.

Paul says in Galatians 5:1, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." As we see the evil day approaching, let us strive with every fiber of our strength to stand against it; let us not be overwhelmed by it!

Rather, let us be resolute in our determination to stand fast in the truth that has set us free! Let us proclaim the holy word of Jesus our Savior until He returns to take us to be forever with Him, according to Acts 1:11 which says, “This same Jesus…shall come again…”