One the things L. Ron Hubbard is known for instilling in his Scientologist minions was their ability to redefine words through associating different emotions and symbols with the word than were intended.

The cult founder once advised, "The way to redefine a word is to get the new definition repeated as often as possible . . . This, so far as words are concerned, is the public opinion battle for belief in your definitions, and not those of the opposition. A consistent, repeated effort is the key to any success with this technique of propaganda."

So take the word tolerance. The standard definition in our culture used to be: ‘I am diametrically opposed to what you believe in, but I will defend to the death your right to say it even though I believe you’re totally wrong.”

Now tolerance is what’s called multiculturalism: “You believe what you want to believe and I believe what I want to believe, and what you believe is true and good and what I believe is true and good.”

*****

Not only is our country going through a winter cycle, as I’ve written about many times before, but we’re living in a rare time period where several cycles are taking place simultaneously.

There’s the natural 80-year cycloram, which covers the span of a natural lifetime in the four seasons, but there’s also what historians call a 500-year cycle.

“The last Winter cycle in our national life was back in the ’30s with the Great Depression and the difference in the ’30s was people had what Francis Schaeffer called a ‘Christian consensus,’ ” says Jordan. “They knew there was a God; they might not agree who He was, but to know there’s a God is to acknowledge you’re accountable to somebody.

“That means there’s absolute truth and accountability; therefore there can be real justice. It’s not just, ‘Your truth is your truth, and my truth is my truth, and it doesn’t make any difference; we can both be right.’

. . . “When you see our culture—socially, economically, politically—collapsing around you it’s because the foundation that held it up isn’t there anymore. And you can’t prop up the building forever if the foundation’s gone.

“The cycle we’re going through; in the past that cycle has been in the context of this light of a basically Christianized culture. When the government and the court system struggle to define marriage you know the government’s lost it. Every time the marriage issue gets put in front of the populace, what happens? Thirty-three states have passed marriage definition laws where marriage is between one man and one woman.

“Same sex marriage—people know that doesn’t work. In the face the claims of intolerance and bigotry and homophobic, people still say in the voting booth 2 to 1 that marriage is what we (traditionally) know it to be. ‘We might not can explain why it’s that way, we just know it is. We might not be able to philosophically argue you know what that is . . . ’

“You know, Romans 2 said God put that knowledge into people. He made people where they understand that. So despite all the rhetoric and pressure to the contrary, there are certain things you just know because God put it in you constitutionally when He made you.”

*****

Jordan continues, “People say today, ‘The government doesn’t get it!’ When the government doesn’t get it, there’s been a shift from the foundation that the government comes from away, and so what’s happened is our culture has been co-opted.

“When the cycles were going basically in the Christian context, you just kind of muddled along. But now the cycle has gone into the winter season outside of a Christian mentality. Five hundred years ago you had the same kind of shift.

“So just like 80 years ago you had the last winter to look at, the Great Depression, if you wanted to look at the winter before that you could go back to time right before the Civil War and then for the one before look at the time leading into the Revolutionary War.

“If you go back 500 years, you go back to the ending of the period that’s called the Dark Ages. It ended with tremendous upheavals economically, politically, socially. The social order before was called feudalism. Ever seen the movie Braveheart? You had the little fiefdoms? And people lived in this guy’s kingdom and he’s a cobbler, but the wealth all belonged to the monarch. That’s when you had the knights and all that kind of business.

“Our culture goes back to England and the Magna Carta when all that stuff was breaking up, but during the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation, there was this new beginning, and economically you move from the feudal system to what we now call capitalism where you have the right to gain the profit from your labors.

“Well, that was a fundamental sea change in the way the economy of the Western world operated. The Protestant Reformation, you just think it was about reforming the Roman church, but there literally was a revolution that took place socially and economically. The thing that got Luther in the most trouble with the people in Europe was when he joined the peasant revolt against the feudalistic lords.”

*****

In I Thessalonians, when Paul talks about ‘to fill up their sin always for the wrath has come upon them to the uttermost,’ this is actually a 500-year cycle coming out of Scripture.

“When we looked at that expression, we went back to Genesis 15, where God executed the legal binding covenant with Abraham because He was going to send his people down into Egypt to be there for four generations, and then they would come out, and the reason he’s going to wait is because the sins of the Amorites were not full yet,” explains Jordan. “The judgment that needed to fall on the people who were in the land of Palestine, the land God promised to Abraham, they’re in there to usurp it.

“God said to Abraham, ‘I’m going to give you that land but I’m going to wait until the sins of the people in that land have matured to the place where judgment is the only option. God knew about that cycle. He knew it was going to be there. He backed up on the calendar and he said, ‘I need a nation to go do that,’ and when He gave that covenant to Abraham, Abraham didn’t even have a kid yet. He wasn’t going in there to knock them out. But he said, ‘I’m going to do it,’ and there was a cycle. Now that cycle turns out to be 490 years, and if you start with Abraham, you’ll find 490-year cycles in Israel’s history over and over.

“Now you know one important 490-year cycle, don’t you? Daniel 9. Those 70 weeks are 490 years. That’s the last one of those cycles. So when that cycle comes to fruition at its end, that cycle of rebellion will have come to the point where judgment is the only answer.

“In 1 Thessalonians that moment had come with Israel. Israel was in exactly the condition that they will be in in the last days over here. They were in exactly the position where nothing but wrath was left for them.

“So it isn’t strange when you go out . . . Israel’s God’s nation in the earth. If you want to see how a nation would operate with God as its God, you’re to look at Israel. But what’s true of Israel God designed to be true of all nations. And through them and their leadership and example, all the other nations were going to learn how to function the way God designed a nation to function. One of the ways was through that cycle in Genesis 8. That cyclical life pattern is always there and you can’t change that. That’s why people who have no idea why they should feel the way they do about marriage, know they feel that way.

“What’s going on now is that 500-year cycle is fixing to run over us, and that 80-year cycle is fixing to run over us and once the trend moves on, there are going to be some fascinating things ahead!”