The United Nations is gearing up for its “Summit of the Future” in 2024. Now, that doesn’t sound ominous. Does it? This summit reportedly will help the U.N. find pathways toward achieving its Agenda 2030, a global project announced by the U.N. in 2015.
In September, the U.N. General Assembly convened in New York City. One of its key goals was to rescue and accelerate its pursuit of Agenda 2030 in preparation for the “Summit of the Future.” At this year’s meeting, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, “Now is the time for a global plan to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which are woefully off-track halfway towards their 2030 deadline.”
This 2023 U.N. meeting was a sort of “midterm exam” for the U.N.’s Agenda 2030. The test results are in, and they are not good. With seven years to go, the U.N. is failing to achieve its goals, with only about 15 percent of its targets on track. The U.N., however, is not stopping the pursuit of Agenda 2030 – rather, it called on world leaders to redouble their efforts in pursuit of these goals.
To this end, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a political declaration to accelerate the implementation of Agenda 2030. Buckle your seatbelts because the accelerator will be pushed to the floor.
What is Agenda 2030? It includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals for the world to reach by 2030. These 17 goals include no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education and access to clean water and sanitation.
Goals like zero hunger are neither evil nor diabolical. However, how the U.N. wants to achieve those goals is highly problematic. I will explain the problems with the U.N.’s solutions, but first, let’s give some perspective to the needs.
Worldview Askew
Only a heartless person would say goals like zero hunger are bad. I don’t want anyone going hungry anywhere in the world. I dare say the Christian worldview has done more to advance aid to the poor than any other worldview. Helping the hungry is noble and biblical.
“It is an indictment of every one of us that millions of people are starving in this day and age,” the U.N.’s Guterres said at the September meeting. I think the indictment is more about worldview than about food distribution. Even the U.N. notes that our world produces enough food to feed more people than we have in the world today.
I believe a biblical worldview would solve hunger. Sadly, statistics from the Barna Group reveal that only about 4 percent of Americans have a biblical worldview. If it is only 4 percent in America, can you imagine how low it is in other nations around the world?
How can a biblical worldview solve hunger? Consider a personal story of this in motion. My grandmother grew up in a small community in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains of Southwestern Virginia. Her father died in his 40s, leaving his widow with six kids during the Great Depression. To say times were lean is an understatement. Thankfully, their community was made up of relatives and good Christian people. The government gave them zero help, but they made it through by relying on the Lord, hard work and the help of their godly family and church family.
Each of these components arises from a biblical worldview. First, we realize that we are in God’s hands and He knows how to meet our needs. Secondly, we work hard to provide for our families. As God provides, we become a channel of His blessings to others.
God’s Love in Action
The Lord gave my grandmother a heart for the needy, born out of her first-hand experience with hunger and want. As America moved from poverty to prosperity again, she and my grandfather built a godly home filled with love. They never forgot the hardships they endured and they became a channel of blessings to others. My grandmother loved Jesus and was a wonderful cook, so feeding people was a natural expression of her heart. She constantly provided friends and neighbors in need with meals. You could not step foot in her house without eating something, even if you just finished eating at a steakhouse.
Providing for those in need is an expression of God’s love in action. God has been so generous to me, so I want to be a channel of His generosity to others. Imagine if our world lived out this biblical concept. No one would be hungry.
The U.N. is trying to address a spiritual worldview issue with a political and economic solution. I believe this directly relates to their failures thus far. Their solution? Throw more money at it. The U.N. Secretary-General challenged the member nations to provide an SDG stimulus package of $500 billion a year to help them meet the 17 goals.
Recipe for Disaster
Massive questions are hanging in the air with Agenda 2030. First, how does the U.N. define terms like “zero hunger?” How will we know when there is zero hunger on Earth?
Is there a way to measure this goal?
The U.N. spells out its answer for us in Agenda 2030. For their zero-hunger initiative, they list five goals with three action steps. The U.N.’s first two goals to end hunger are what you might expect. They want to eliminate malnutrition by giving people year-round access to nutritious food. I see nothing to argue with here.
Their third goal, to end hunger, is subtle, so I want to unpack it for you. Here is how they think we should solve world hunger, “By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment.”
Notice they want to double the income for the people groups listed by giving them “secure and equal access to land… [and] financial services.”
This is blatant Marxist communism! The way they want to end hunger is by redistributing the wealth and by taking away private property ownership. They do not hide their plan. It is there for all to see.
Is it not curious that the last line of this goal says they want to double the agricultural productivity and incomes through “non-farm employment”? How do you improve food production by moving people out of farm employment? Here in America, some farmers are paid not to farm!
That is a big question that leads to a couple of other major topics—climate change and artificial intelligence. Simply stated, artificial intelligence and other technological advances could push humans out of the agricultural job market almost entirely.
The climate change agenda also plays a major role in the global government. The fourth goal to end hunger states:
“By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality.”
Climate change permeates the entire 2030 Agenda. The term “climate change” is so ambiguous that it could be wielded to promote or defend anything. Global elites are using it to create guilt and fear so that people will get on board with their globalist government agenda.
My wife and daughter like to bake on occasion. I was surprised to learn that salt is often an ingredient in many cakes. Just about every recipe in a cookbook sprinkles in salt somewhere. So, too, “climate change” is sprinkled into every globalist agenda. Any time the global government elites need to motivate people to action, they sprinkle in “climate change.” But this is a communistic recipe for disaster.
A Better Way
I don’t share these things with you to bring fear into your life. I’m not fearful of the U.N.’s Agenda 2030. People devise plans that never come to fruition. Only God is in complete control. The U.N.’s “Summit for the Future” in 2024 is in response to the dismal progress they’ve made toward their goals since 2015.
We need to be aware that our world will see a greater push toward these goals, and toward communism, as we approach 2030.
This is the time for those with a biblical worldview to be the city on the hill that cannot be hidden. We do not fight fear with fear or panic with panic. Instead, we should show others that there is a better way to live by living out a biblical worldview before the world. We have the solutions the world craves.
“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).
[Josh Davis shares more about globalism at SWRC’s conferences and in his upcoming book, Rise of the One World Mind.]