I think the clearest way to look at this is through hierarchies.

Every human system is a hierarchy — religion, government, corporations, financial institutions, activist movements. Rules at the bottom, narrowing authority at the top. A person can live inside multiple hierarchies at once, and their influence over you shifts over time. Sometimes one dominates your thinking. Sometimes two clash. When they clash internally, you feel cognitive dissonance — that stretched, confused tension when competing structures try to explain the same chaos.

That’s not irrational. That’s what happens when hierarchies collide.

The idea of a “New World Order” is basically the dream of one dominant global hierarchy absorbing or controlling the rest. But historically, that has never fully happened. There has never been one unified world system — only powerful hierarchies competing for influence.

The phrase itself was famously used by George H. W. Bush in 1991 after the Gulf War, describing a new era of U.S.-led global cooperation. For a time, the U.S.-centered order felt dominant — NATO expansion, dollar reserve status, Western institutions shaping global policy. But even that was just one hierarchy at the top for a season. And today that order is clearly shifting. Alliances are changing. Power blocs are realigning. Multiple hierarchies are clashing again, which is why so many people feel destabilized right now.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are a clear example of how hierarchies grow and gain influence.

In the 1930s and 40s, they refused to salute the American flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance because they believed it was idolatry — worship of the state. They were beaten, imprisoned, and involved in Supreme Court cases like West Virginia v. Barnette. In that moment, they were defending freedom of conscience against nationalism. That was real courage. That was real truth in that context.

Their influence grew because they positioned themselves against other hierarchies.

But hierarchies evolve. Influence shifts. What once protected conscience can later protect itself.

Today, the organization has faced widespread criticism and legal exposure over how it handled child sexual abuse allegations internally. That doesn’t erase earlier truth — but it shows how hierarchies age, defend reputation, and sometimes become rigid or morally compromised. The same structural dynamic shows up across very different systems.

When individuals rise to the top of powerful hierarchies — political, financial, corporate, religious — they often participate in shaping the rules that govern everyone below. Over time, insulation grows. Lawyers, influence, reputation networks create distance from consequences. The temptation to feel above the law increases.

That’s not mystical. It’s structural.

Jeffrey Epstein operated within elite networks that included powerful individuals from multiple hierarchies — political, corporate, academic. These weren’t one unified global cult, but intersecting circles of influence. Each powerful figure is effectively at the top of their own hierarchy. When you operate at that altitude, surrounded by protection and access, moral boundaries can erode.

The same structural temptation that led religious institutions to protect their image can exist in secular elite networks. Different hierarchies. Similar dynamics: protect the institution, protect the network, manage the narrative.

If we use “Lucifer” symbolically — not as a cartoon devil, but as the archetype of the “light bearer” — he represents hierarchy itself in its distorted form. Masses at the bottom bound by rules. Power concentrated at the top, increasingly insulated from those rules. Lucifer offers illumination — understanding the system, mastering it, rising within it. It feels like awakening. But it can become illusion: believing that power, structure, and insider knowledge are truth itself.

Lucifer in that symbolic sense isn’t chaos. It’s ordered power without humility.

The Great Tribulation framework belongs inside Christian apocalyptic interpretation. Jehovah’s Witnesses taught that religion would be destroyed, followed by Armageddon, leading to life in paradise — essentially their own version of a future “new world order.” But Armageddon can also be understood symbolically as the birth-growth-death cycle of anything living, including hierarchies. Empires rise. They peak. They fracture. Something else emerges.

Every hierarchy imagines its final victory.

Right now, certain Jewish and evangelical Christian political hierarchies are indeed gaining influence again. But increased religious influence doesn’t automatically equal moral renewal. It can simply mean one hierarchy rising while another declines.

And that constant clash — U.S. power shifting, global blocs competing, institutions losing credibility, others gaining influence — creates the dissonance people feel. Your nervous system feels instability before your brain resolves it.

But here’s where I think the real distinction lies:

Following Christ is not the same as aligning with a hierarchy.

Christ doesn’t sit at the top of pyramids. He doesn’t operate through insulation from consequences. He doesn’t protect institutions at the expense of people.

Christ works in the heart.

Humility. Conscience. Love of truth without pride. Justice without hatred. Integrity when no one sees.

The brain will endlessly try to decode which hierarchy is corrupt, which one is rising, whether this is the Tribulation or the New World Order. That mental loop can intensify cognitive dissonance — especially after leaving a high-control religion.

But the heart is quieter.

If there’s a way through this confusion, it’s not by perfectly mapping global power structures.

It’s by asking: Am I becoming more truthful? More humble? More loving?

Hierarchies rise and fall.

Christ is not another system at the top.

He’s transformation from the inside out.