The heady days of détente between the USA and the late USSR come to mind with the death of former US President Gerald Ford during the last week of 2006 at the honored age of 93.

As the 38th President from 1974-75 his policy of détente, a relaxing of tension between nations, stood in stark contrast to the Cold War face off between the United States and the Soviet Union. Though it was a well-meaning policy, the communists turned it into a propaganda coup by increasing their constellation of satellites by eleven nations from 1974-79. By all appearances America was losing the Cold War.

But the tide for the Soviets turned in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The USSR fell upon the financial rocks, losing the Cold War because its economy could no longer support efforts to compete with the USA's military and technological advancements. The new Kremlin leader General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev began to institute limited reforms, moving almost as slowly as a Russian bear in hibernation.

On June 14, 1987 Reagan stood in West Berlin facing the famous Brandenburg Gate of the Berlin Wall—a concrete and wire symbol of the greater Iron Curtain wall between the free and the communist worlds.

Reagan intended to put pressure on the evil empire: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Tear down this wall!

The history of mankind is replete with examples of walls erected between people—economic walls, ideological walls, racist and tribal walls, educational walls, religious walls… Man makes walls to divide, to hide the truth, to exalt the self by keeping others in their "place," to exert power over the people, walls to oppress and deceive, and defensive walls to avoid having to repent and change.

Who will tear down these walls? Who will unseat the despot who devised them?

There is no détente with the devil. That evil dictator seeks to provoke man to make bigger walls, and the biggest wall he wants built is the wall between man and God.

The sad news is that all those walls exist, towering belligerently over the nations. What hope is there of tearing them down?

Who would have guessed in President Ford's day that the Berlin Wall would be torn down in less than 15 years? Who could have guessed that when President Reagan challenged Secretary Gorbachev at the Brandenburg Gate that the Soviet Union would collapse in less than five years?

Sobering thought—what could happen in the next decade or two? America is the only world-class superpower now. How long will her wall of freedom stand?

Due to her preoccupation with defending immorality, sexual and otherwise, divine prophecies in the Bible would indicate not long. Those prophecies also anticipate a new European-based superpower of old Roman Empire dimensions locked in a fierce and fiery death battle with an angry Middle Eastern entity, and with all comers in short order.

Some military walls will come down then. They will be bombed down!

But the intrinsic walls between peoples and nations and between man and God will not come down no matter how great the tribulation (Matthew 24:21-22) that is prophesied for those days. "The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts" (Revelation 9:20-21, New International Version).

Who will tear down these walls? The good news is that all the sin-spawned, dividing walls of history will crumble to nothing at the feet of the soon-to-return Jesus Christ. " Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!" (Revelation 11:15).

True spiritual freedom is on the horizon. True détente can now relax the tensions between you and your Creator.