I can't believe it's been six years since the attacks on America's home soil. Before then, my dad used to say that people didn't understand that all it would take is one really big event to change the world -- to create the kind of scenario that could result in a massive loss of freedoms. September 11 was a day like that.

In the war on terror, the Western world has lost considerable freedoms, and nations' surveillance of their citizens has increased to levels that never before would have been accepted. Out of the ashes of the World Trade Center, a new world order is being created.

Today, some people wonder how the Antichrist's persecution of the saints could ever occur -- and how the people of the world could ever go along with the implementation of the mark of the beast. But these people seem to forget how quickly the world can change -- indeed, how quickly it already has changed. 

Catastrophic situations require extraordinary measures. Governments set up emergency powers for times like these -- when totalitarian measures can be invoked for the "greater good." It's not all that hard to imagine an event, or series of events, that could lead to such responses. And it's not too hard to imagine a time when Christians might be viewed as the enemy -- indeed, to a growing number of people we already are.

It only takes a day.