Something snapped. The world turns on its dark side - It is winter.

The poignant chorus that opens Michael Tippet's A Child of our Time came to mind this morning, as I contemplated my sense of a turn towards darkness, a line being crossed, apparent extinction of the possibility of this-worldly hope. 

This is, of course, not prove-able by any material/ objective/ public "evidence" or logic; but I feel that something which was holding-back some significant number of Men to be motivated by God and Good, seems to me to have snapped. Snapped in response to the unremitting destructiveness and aggressive untruthfulness of the Western leadership class. 

Some slender yet lingering optimism has blinked out; a belief concerning the possibility that National and Globalist rulers ("Them") could - sometime soon - perhaps learn from experience, might awaken to spiritual reality, and potentially step backwards from teetering on the knife-edge that they have constructed for Mankind. 

Some aspiration that others, elsewhere in the world, would (overall, in principle) cleave to God's agenda - in face of the general trend. 

I sense that the camel's back has broken under the final straw. Inner intimations of Good groupings somewhere, somehow! - feelings that I hardly knew I previously held - have been snuffed-out like a guttering candle. 

"They" have (it seems) pushed, and pushed, with their reckless escalating of threats to Mankind being used to blackmail compliance; until just-now the constraints on fallible mortal Men have snapped; and suddenly many have switched from Good motivations to evil motivations. 

The tragedy of sustained war (of any kind, but especially a spiritual war) is that while explicit material aims may remain the same; and the sides in dispute may be much as before in their membership; the spiritual situation has been transformed - because suddenly "good aims" are poisoned by evil underlying spiritual motivations. 

Then, a side that was Good, is now motivated by evil.

Those demon-servants who asserted the evil of their enemies from the beginning, see themselves vindicated. "See!" they say, "I always told you they are wicked!" ; whereas it was actually the effect of their own unremitting spite against their enemies that sapped the will-to-Good - brutalized, and finally broke the minds of the once-Good. 

Once someone is committed to evil, they can always find plenty of evidence of evil in others - because evil always is present in others. 

This world and its Beings is mixed between God and Satan. It is not our-selves, but only our spiritual affiliations, that can be for-good. 

Yet, in the spiritual war, because a commitment to God, Good, divine creation - is an inner thing that cannot be proved or refuted in any objective fashion, it can be claimed by anyone. 

Claimed especially by those who serve the agenda of evil, and who live by lies and are driven by a positive belief in sin. 

In such matters we must - because there is no alternative, as well as because it is what God desires of us  - use personal discernment. And take personal responsibility for this usage - not sheltering behind some external "authority" whose inner true-motivations we almost-never can know. 

(In this modern era, appeals to authority are merely rhetorical, not real; mere "public discourse" and not a valid basis for determining our eternal destiny.) 

Our basic spiritual task in a world that has indeed "turned to the dark side" is not qualitatively different from that which has confronted earlier generations; and we in the West have already been living in such a world of spiritual "winter" for some decades.  

There are no "good sides" anymore, not anywhere in the material world, but only in the spiritual world. And this is a lesson well worth learning, essential indeed; so that we are not led astray by loyalty to nations, institutions, corporations, churches who in their hearts have embraced sinful motives!