In one of the first of the seemingly endless string of GOP presidential debates, Ron Paul got notice for voicing fears that a literal anti-immigration wall along America’s southern border could be used to keep us inside the country as well as to keep illegal immigrants out. Lots of people rolled their eyes at what they thought was paranoid alarmism.

But we’ve been saying for years that the Bible essentially assures us that at some point – and we believe it’ll be before the Rapture of believers – the entire world will become a police state. And while Paul and others have continued to express fears that the United States has been creeping toward martial law, our concerns are for Christians and others around the globe, because our true citizenship isn’t of this world.

And the facts will be that the Antichrist will impose the Mark of the Beast and a cashless society as described in Revelation 13. Whether this is coincident, a cause of martial law or an effect of some other actions isn’t clear. What is clear is that the mark will be the way that the Antichrist and his worldly minions – presumably including many government officials and others the world over – in effect control all those who accept the mark and force the rest of us to live outside of mainstream society.

So while Paul has become an effective spokesman at least for martial-law fears, we must be wary of depending on him to raise the banner on such views. One reason is that he doesn’t seem to be proffering a particularly Biblical interpretation of such circumstances.

The second reason to avoid tying our wagon to Paul’s, in terms of public perceptions, is that he is in the process of being discredited by the mainstream media and the political establishments on both the left and the right.

Leftist pundits have always thought Paul the libertarian a lot nutty. But now, while they’ve tolerated his surge in this election cycle to the point that Paul actually could win the Iowa caucuses on January 3, the Republican Party brain trust absolutely won’t brook the possibility that somehow Paul could become their party’s nominee in the fight to oust Barack Obama. It’s most likely they will finally attack his isolationist foreign-policy views to bring Paul’s candidacy crashing to earth.

So expect Paul to be discredited as a spokesman for martial-law fears – and everything else he stands for.  But keep in mind that he’s just a man, and the truth, including the Antichrist’s imposition of what amounts to martial law at some point, will still be the truth.