WHO IS LIKE UNTO GOD:
A TIMELY TIMELESS QUESTION

(Editor's Note: This is an updated version of a page we published last year with some revisions and additions. The issues discussed here are still quite relevant and may very well be for some time to come still!-CC) 

Who is like unto God? You might have read about that famous challenging cry St. Michael the Archangel gave Lucifer before defeating him and his rebellious third of the angels in the famous battle described in the book of Revelation (Rev. 12:7-9). With this thought in mind, I'd like to start off with a prayer that I think might be quite appropriate in these turbulent unsettling times.

Dear Lord, help us all to understand, especially now, how important it is to seek to do Your will in all things with Your help and grace. Remind us not to put our trust in princes, no matter how seductive or even coercive they might be in their false promises of an earthly paradise. Help us rather to remember that we should strive for the true peace that comes from following You and in obeying Your commandments. Amen!  

The Covid pandemic brought to light some disturbing coercively utopian plans from the world’s so-called elites for a technocratic one world government run by those known as the “globalists”, in the United Nations, various non-governmental organizations, multinational corporations and even hedge funds such as Blackrock, supposedly for our own good and the good of the planet, in what is being called the Great Reset or the New World Order. 

The World Economic Forum, a major player in the push for the Great Reset released a video in 2017 in which they foresaw a wonderful future by 2030 in which, as they put it so memorably “you will own nothing but be happy.” Why? Well, all your needs will be taken care of by that trusted group of experts in corporate technocratic governance of course! 

Ah... but what’s the catch for what they call Agenda 2030? Well, for starters, this is partly why socialism was condemned by various popes over the past centuries. Such top-down governance deprives many of us of the means to exercise our God given abilities and talents on His behalf, and our behalf as well, in an increasingly intrusive and authoritarian bureaucratic state. 

When you own nothing, you become a kind of serf, perhaps in this case a techno serf, whose destiny is determined not by you, following God’s will, but rather by overlords for whom you are in effect just a piece of property.

All of this should raise eyebrows as well as awareness about those who wish to set up a technocratic government free from traditional restraints of consent of the governed. Their professed aim is to lead us into some sort of post-industrial paradise in which all your needs will supposedly be met by an elite of technical experts controlling everything.

In their world the state should fashion and control your destiny, not you acting in accordance with God’s will! 

Needless to say, this is an especially important time for our prayers, penances, and availing ourselves of the sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance, better known as Communion and Confession, whenever and wherever possible.

Partly in the name of regulating carbon emissions to fight what they call climate change, among other things, these elites want to control our lives to an unprecedented extent, as to where you can live and work, how much you can drive, and what you can and cannot do, even what you can eat!

This might very well lead into where and how you can worship, all this ostensibly for some predetermined planetary common good, with the Triune God, the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as an afterthought at best.

Note also that there is an elite focus as well on population control and even reduction, with an eerily eugenicist flavor, supposedly for the good of the planet. 

Concerns about this possible dystopian future should not just be sloughed off as Q-Anon conspiracy fodder. It’s all too easy to mutter “conspiracy theory” when confronted with this information, and indeed it is necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff from various websites, which is admittedly quite a difficult task! 

But the censorship coming from Facebook, Twitter, and Google about various Covid treatments, for example, only adds fuel to the fire for many of us questioning motives and agendas.

These globalists have suffered some setbacks in their plans to “Build Back Better” as their slogan goes, over the past year. More and more people are waking up to their seemingly benign but actually quite sinister agenda, but the battle against them has not been won yet by any means.

(Also, as has been pointed out, the desire to ‘Build Back Better” implies a need to tear down what already exists, certainly in the way we currently consume and produce energy. If it ain’t broke why fix it? Why would we need to throw economies around the world into dysfunction and chaos in the first place with Green energy policies that are not ready for prime time quite yet.

The favored renewables of mainly solar and wind power currently can only supply about 20% of our energy needs. If we try to eliminate oil, natural gas, and coal too soon this will cause great havoc and hardship among those needing reliable sources of energy to run businesses, transport goods, and heat or cool homes.) 

The “movers and shakers” among the globalists are poised to do a great deal of harm to humanity as they try to implement their plans, if we don’t raise awareness about the challenges and dangers that lie ahead and make our voices heard peacefully but forcefully nonetheless.

We’re dealing with people playing God, most likely without seeking His help or grace, to manage affairs increasingly only with human strength, with our Lord all but forgotten at best. 

Granted, supernatural Faith in the Triune God and Christianity seems tragically superstitious to many of those who think of themselves as humanity’s final authority. But God has given us an abundance of proof to those willing to believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But what warped faith will be required in this New World Order?  

Will it be some strange worldly humanist or pantheistic creed supplanting Christianity with man in the driver’s seat rather than the Son of Man (Jesus), worshiping the created (Earth and the elite rulers) rather than the Creator (God)? This is indeed a real possibility. 

As of now, towards the end of 2022, there are those even in the Vatican who are giving some acquiescence and even approval of this globalist mindset. Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller has decried their stress “about topics like ecology, the planet, or other tropics and less and less about Jesus Christ and his teaching”.

It’s as if all of humanity’s woes can be solved by various bureaucratic organizations fighting climate change. And while it is indeed important for us to be responsible stewards of God’s creation, when we push Him aside, the results have turned out to be disastrous time and time again.

Remember, considering our brokenness as fallen human beings, it’s hard enough to run a society with a strong sense of what are known as Judeo-Christian values. Without God and the moral compass He provides from His commandments and the sacraments, any utopian vision, however well-intentioned is bound to lead to disaster, as it has so often with Communism, for a good example.

Time and time again we’ve seen governments acting supposedly for the good of the people, where the very richest and most powerful (and perhaps most cunning) in society wind up running, owning, and controlling everything!

Australia, where freedom of speech and movement were severely curtailed over the past couple of years in the name of fighting Covid, has given us a chilling look at what could be coming to the US in the not too distant future. The government there instituted draconian lockdowns over a year ago, where even stepping out to a local park could get you harassed and even beaten by local police. 

Thanks to the pushback from those quarters on the internet and in public opinion that have not been censored, there has been a respite of sorts in many places. The government of Canada, after reacting quite harshly to truckers protesting compulsory Covid vaccinations last winter, has since relaxed or dropped many onerous restrictions.

Still the danger is that they could nonetheless be quickly and forcefully reimplemented from another “pandemic” of some sort to bring us all in line (or should I say to heel). 

Also, in the event of a worldwide economic collapse from so much global debt or a major war we might wake up one morning to find all our money has been replaced by some new digital currency, which will give the elites way too much sway over regular economic activity.

And while mandatory vaccinations have been eased they are by no means gone, and many people in this country, for example school age and college students or those in the military, are being required to take more shots or even boosters in order to participate in everyday activities.

This is not to denigrate medical treatment, but when it comes to treating Covid or any other virus or medical condition one size does not fit all! 

The whole vaccination program has also shown a major defect with top-down authoritarian methods of implementing programs meant to improve the quality of our lives. “No jab no job” has carried with it a Pandora’s box of problems concerning medical privacy, religious objections, and even serious disruptions to one’s natural immune system with deadly side effects as a result.

In addition, many people given multiple shots and “boosters” have come down with Covid anyway, and there are more and more reports of deaths and injuries surfacing in part from these shots. 

I just hope and pray we can all see what could turn into a road to hell up ahead paved with supposedly the very best of intentions. And that, more importantly, our clergy may be made much more aware of those in power who wish to make themselves God, with little or no thought or concern about God’s will for us. 

I’m not at all an expert on this subject, but I hope that some pages like those linked below, and in the text links on this page, can help shed some light on all this, but my selection is meant to be suggestive, not exhaustive by any means. 

You may well ask, how could any of this level of control possibly be enforced? Look at your smartphone in part for the answer. 

Your phone might well turn into a digital overseer with a QR code becoming mandatory in the not too distant future to report on how good a citizen some technocratic state deems you to be! 

Such a code already exists on some smartphones for a vaccine passport or "health pass" in other countries can easily be expanded to include all sorts of other personal information!

We’re already seeing this take shape in China with the social credit score where citizens are rewarded or penalized and given various privileges or restrictions by a numerical rating based on their behavior and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party’s regime. 

There have even been calls for a Global ID. This could become a mandatory Digital ID, perhaps called a Health ID of some sort, whether by phone, or facial recognition, or some sort of microchip implant perhaps, (Heaven forbid!) that becomes required for all activity and commerce. Think of George Orwell’s 1984 in 2034 or maybe even 2024! 

Your smartphone could easily become a digital leash in the Great Reset from the QR code and surveillance from the phone itself. And might that leash for those following some predetermined algorithm of obedience to the state set up by the powers that be, become a digital noose all too easily if you step out of line?

How might this happen? For starters, as mentioned earlier there are quite serious plans in the works to digitize all our currencies. With that you can say goodbye to your privacy, as an elite group acquires a powerful means of coercion to decide your future, and your children's as well, in what you can buy and sell.

Already in today’s Cancel Culture people’s livelihoods are being threatened if they don’t follow politically correct orthodoxies. This trend will only get worse unless we all push back on this! 

Think of that social credit score coming here to the US or other countries perhaps in the not-too distant future. You have the “wrong” websites on your browsing history, the wrong friends, perhaps, or even the wrong thoughts as determined by elites to be misinformation? Better get in line or you might lose much of your freedom!

Those who were being denied access to supermarkets in France about a year ago if they didn’t have the right health pass on their phones may have experienced just a foretaste of what could come in the US and perhaps worldwide!

Nonetheless, the planners in and out of the UN and globalist think tanks foresee a world they control, part of Agenda 2030. This is a world of so called “smart cities” micromanaging all aspects of one’s life including diet, vocation, and energy consumption all in the name of fighting carbon emissions and climate change.

It is worth asking, how much of this is about being good stewards of the earth or about fostering technocratic, autocratic control of humanity?

The abolition of private property mentioned earlier, a key Marxist tenet by the way, might sound appealing considering all the wars and family conflicts, too numerous to mention as well, that have been spawned from private property disputes. 

However, its abolition leads not to paradise but to a hell on earth in which select overlords wind up controlling everything and keeping everyone else from achieving the economic and social empowerment they claim to champion. When "the people" own everything we do indeed own nothing! 

Why not teach people instead about the Christian principles of being good stewards of private property, of not being greedy hellbound individuals whose only value is how much they own, for whom too much is never enough? Of sharing God’s blessings and talents you’ve been given naturally without coercion. Of asking God to help you deal with whatever concupiscent greedy desires you have?

Think also of the parables of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) or the parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:16-21) in the Gospels, for good instructive examples of how not to behave.

As more and more small businesses go out of business from the aftereffects of the pandemic, we see that the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, that human affairs are best managed at a level closest to those affected, is being ignored and otherwise shunted aside. 

God gave you a talent to operate a bakery, a restaurant, a hardware store, to have your own business as a mechanic or hairstylist or such and thus serve your family and community? Too bad! Many small businesses deemed non-essential during the Covid lockdowns were forced to shut their doors afterwards as a result!

We are entering a world dominated by the likes of Walmart and Amazon, with many mom-and-pop stores and local services risking extinction from a depressed economic climate brought about in no small part by government mismanagement during the Pandemic. 

Our Wizards of Smart seek to create a well-ordered heaven on earth, one that we Christians know, or should know, that fallen humanity can’t achieve and especially can’t even begin to reach without God. 

This has been the bane of humanity for ages, following the tyranny of the apostrophe, of those who wish to make themselves Gods rather than God’s. 

Science has become God for those for whom the test tube instead the tabernacle is their object of worship! There is even research and experiments going on, involving cloning and hybrids, as if to invent new species! 

This is not to denigrate legitimate scientific research, developments, and breakthroughs in medicine, but to point out the more sinister nature of when science, along with technology, is used to advance an agenda of secular statist control. 

Just remember that as God strives to bring good out of evil, so Satan and his demonic minions try to bring evil out of good! 

Along these lines of a usurpation of God’s authority, there is also a movement called Transhumanism to contend with in which there is to be a great blending of humanity with technology, man with machine as it were possibly even linking us all up to the internet internally in the name of human enhancement! It has been touted in various position papers, scientific journals, and the press (as well as on the internet, of course) over the past few years. 

Also worth noting is the degree to which what is known as artificial intelligence (AI) generated by computers and machines is to call more and more of the shots in this brave new word.

We’re not just talking about AutoCorrect in spell check here. There are serious concerns that AI and Transhumanism could one day get seriously out of hand. Do you want to live in a world where gigantic mainframe computers, Robbie the Robot, or worse, perhaps, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator call all the shots? Like you're stuck in a bad science fiction movie?

Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum and one of the main progenitors of the Great Reset spoke of a Fourth Industrial Revolution to “lead to a fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity,” in an address before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in May, 2019, before the start of the pandemic. 

He had previously spoken approvingly in an interview in 2016 of the implantable microchips we would all have as this marvelous reset took shape. Is anyone going to call him on this, as to what his plans are now as he gushes about the great changes he sees coming our way? Was he thinking these implants would be used for commerce? Surveillance? Or both of these things?

What is deeply disturbing is the attempt to make the Almighty an algorithm, to digitize the Deity, to reduce existence to formulas, mathematical and otherwise. It’s as if human beings can somehow become the Creator, not the creation! And as we learn more and more of God’s handiwork, we risk becoming more and more arrogant, as to who is the real Author of Life.

This could quite easily and rapidly turn into Big Brother on steroids if implemented! You may remember this line from a popular song by the Police awhile back, (in a different context, of course!) “Every breath you take...every move you make I’ll be watching you.” In this case it would be the Great Technocracy watching all of us!

Maybe I’m old fashioned but I think chips are for dips, cookies, and high-tech devices, as well as automobiles and such! Granted, amazing advances in science have made great strides against diseases in little over a hundred years.

Yet one of the major pharmaceutical companies referred to the mRNA technology used in their vaccines as “functioning very much like an operating system on a computer”. When it comes to operating systems, I think they should be downloaded not injected!

Maybe this is just so 20th century, but I think operating systems should be for hardware, like cellphones and laptops; for machines. We human beings are not meant to be machines or soulless humanoids obeying the will of someone's keystrokes, be they beneficent, or malevolent, which, given human history, is a more likely outcome.

I am a human being, not a machine! And so are you! Besides, God has already given us a great “operating system”, the Ten Commandments, His laws of love! 

Many traditionally minded Catholics and Christians have their spider senses alert these days about the Mark of the Beast being mandatory for engaging in any kind of commerce as foretold in the book of Revelation (Rev 13:17).

But you don't have to believe in this to understand the sinister implications of needing a QR code or a chip, implanted in the skin or otherwise, to buy and sell anything, particularly when everything about you can be programmed and monitored as mentioned earlier, for your own good of course, by all those in various technocratic bureaucracies. 

For those of you who are completely skeptical of religion or know people who are, for whom God is merely the Flying Spaghetti Monster dripping marinara sauce as he passes on by, do you still want to give that much power and control over to people who may not have your interests at heart at all but rather their own? 

You were created by God to be more than plastic and metal! Your body has an amazing aggregation of literally trillions of cells, over 30 trillion to be exact! It is the housing for your Eternal Soul in this life.

And if you reach heaven upon your passing someday, God willing, your body will be reunited with that soul after our Lord’s Second Coming in a manner much more glorious, powerful, and magnificent than any puny transhumanistic attempt at immortality could ever achieve!

Remember also that your body is meant to be a temple of the Holy Spirit. The important thing for those involved in science and technology is for them to enhance God’s handiwork, not to try to replace it somehow, particularly with cloned animals or even human hybrids and lab-made viruses as with Covid 19, and such. All those who think of themselves as future Dr. Einsteins could become Dr. Frankensteins instead! 

There are those, lusting after immortality, who fancy human experience as something that can one day be transplanted into some man-human hybrid form or transhumanist man-machine so they can supposedly live forever!

But this would be a counterfeit copy of our Lord’s vision of Eternal Life, a cheap knock-off at best! Your soul is not something that can be downloaded and uploaded into some memory card, or worse yet into some kind of humanoid soulless form. 

The soul God gave you is meant to exist forever either in heaven with Him or in hell. It is something special created by God Himself, not by a team of engineers or an IT department!

Those trying to usurp God’s role in our lives risk forfeiting their own place in heaven, where souls in true peace are to be united with awesome glorified bodies impervious to any sort of pain or suffering, in an eternity of amazing peace and joy upon our Lord’s Second Coming!

In the end each of us was made in the image and likeness of God to serve His purpose for us, not some algorithmic bureaucracy that bows down to Artificial Intelligence, Avatars, and Genetically Modified Everything, for the Brave New World.

Again, this is not to denigrate technological or scientific advances that could indeed make all our lives better, but to point out how horribly they could be abused by modern day Molochs!

Increasingly we’re being asked to give our complete trust to Big Government, Big Tech, Big Insurance, Big Corporations, Big Big Big! What happened to “small is beautiful”?

However well-intentioned the idea of a one-world government might be to take care of everyone’s needs, by its very definition this is a well-nigh impossible task for any group of experts, even if they're all geniuses, and most likely that’s not the case these days!

There are too many variables and decisions better made locally as fully as possible. And when they fail to bring about utopia will those with all that power step down? Yeah, right! More likely they will double down with their authoritarian ways ever more brutally, while they shift the blame from themselves for whatever mess they have created onto their increasingly unhappy populations. 

In the end, you cannot nationalize virtue! In addition, the notion that the abolition of nation states will somehow bring about peace from that one big global entity also misses a crucial point.

How can any society that claims to be so all encompassing as to speak to the needs of all its billions of global “citizens” not slide precipitously into a dictatorial monstrously inefficient corrupt mess!

Also, thinking again about Big Tech and Artificial Intelligence, there is no magic algorithm that is going to bring about ecological and human harmony.

If you think otherwise, some of you may well remember back years ago about the amount of time you spent on the phone with some not-so-helpful help desk trying to fix some mysterious glitch that threatened to turn the computer that you got for Christmas into an oversized paperweight!

To say nothing of the bugs, computer viruses and software security breaches still present today! Who will you, or more likely, a loved one, colleague, or neighbor, have to contact if something goes wrong with some piece of nanotechnology in your brain or body?

Shifting gears  for a minute, do you think all these reset plans won’t affect Christianity? Think again! The pandemic brought some disturbing trends into place. Last Year a church in Australia, in the name of fighting Covid, was fined $5000 for holding a gathering and not having the mandated QR code on their door! Each adult worshiper there was fined $1000 as well!

You may also remember last year when a Canadian pastor, Artur Pawlowski was arrested for trying to hold a religious service in a supposed violation of a Covid lockdown. Again, this is not to denigrate the fight against Covid, only to point out how much this can bring out the worst in control freaks running things nowadays.

It’s as if they have not been going after the virus, but rather the human spirit! The constant lockdowns over the past couple of years have brought about shuttered businesses, shattered dreams, and horrible upticks in depression and suicides. 

And what if traditional Church doctrine concerning libidinal issues is labeled as a hate crime someday? There are more than a few nowadays, for whom some variant of Secular Humanism/Statism is their only religion, who see Christians as the Taliban.

According to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, there have been at least 168 reported incidents of “arson, vandalism, and other destruction” on Catholic Churches since May of 2020.

And since the leak of the Supreme Court ruling turning abortion back to the states last Spring, we’ve seen demonic assaults on at least 73 pro-life Pregnancy Centers as well from people following such organizations as Jane’s Revenge, a militant pro-abortion group.

Many on what might be called the secular left see Statism as a religion and likewise abortion up until birth as a sacrament! 

In this regard, the Justice department has recently arrested a number of pro-lifers whose only offenses were peacefully protesting outside abortion clinics. 

In addition, we’ve seen pressure from government against parents trying to stop an aggressive sexualization of young children in school curricula

There have even been rumblings about the supposed dangers to “democracy” by (gasp!) Christian Nationalism!  For the record…..believers of all stripes in Christianty, Catholic and otherwise, are not looking to establish a theocracy in the United States. That argument has always been a strawman. Rather we just want to be able to proclaim our love and faith in God and in His Son Jesus Christ publicly without it always having literally become a federal case!

As mentioned earlier, what if the New World Order brings with it some humanistic or pantheistic GMO "spirituality", with Jesus not being given much, if any thought?

When what is programmed in some code or chip or, heaven forbid, an implant on your skin, determines your destiny, adherence to traditional Catholicism and Christianity could get you fined or otherwise persecuted, perhaps up to and including being denied access to food, educational and recreational facilities, and on and on. 

Again, look at what’s been going on for the past couple of years in Australia and Canada for examples of where civil liberties have been shredded in the name of fighting Covid!  As in the first century with Herod and Nero, in the 21st century there may be no room in the inn for Jesus or any of His followers.

You visited that Christian website, did you? Oops. No food for you at the supermarket this week. Or maybe ever! Unless you shape up and conform your thinking to that permitted by the New World Order or Great Reset or whatever or whoever is in charge! (As mentioned earlier, the French got a foretaste of that last year.)

Think this can’t happen? Read about Joseph Stalin’s terror famine in Ukraine in the 1930’s when that tyrant sought to brutally punish those in that region going against his will by confiscating all their food supplies resulting in the deaths of almost 4 million people! 

Time and time again despots have sought to eradicate or otherwise neutralize Christianity, much in the evil spirit of King Herod ordering the massacre of all boys two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem to try to destroy baby Jesus soon after His birth (Matt 2:16-18). They don’t want any competition from the True God in their False Kingdom!

So, the message I have here with some information and the links I’ve listed below is not meant to be fear-mongering. Quite the opposite, in fact. As our Lord would say, as He did in Luke's Gospel "fear not" (Luke 12:7 and 12:32).

When you feel especially weary from all this pressure and nonsense, seek Him in prayer. The devil wants us afraid rather than alert after all! 

Say no to QR codes and any other such intrusive digital tracking devices being used in such a manner to keep us from practicing our faith in freedom!

To quote from Saint Paul, “now is the acceptable time” (2 Cor 6:2) to object peacefully to the biometric, bionic blitzkrieg headed our way, so that we may exercise our free will in serving God not man.

Let’s have a Great Reset, alright, one in which we strive with loving obedience to be members of the Social Kingdom of Christ and citizens-in-training for heaven! 

God Bless,

Christopher Castagnoli
for www.ourcatholicprayers.com