Sure, I read the news. We are passing through a time of tribulation. Sometimes I’ll comment on developments here, but I don’t pretend to understand very much about it all. You are equally responsible to God for developing your own sense of what is happening. The reason is simple: We aren’t supposed to debate which viewpoint is more accurate, but develop a sense of what God requires of us individually.
There’s a tremendous amount of deception. Back before the Internet, it was much easier to keep things under cover. Some of the most audacious things have happened and only recently do we see evidence that has remained hidden all this time. We all know that it’s because the cost of sharing information has plummeted and the audience is now vastly larger, to the point it’s almost global. So we know about, say the Franklin Scandal and how major American political figures were raping children, and have been for quite some time. We are rightly far more cynical, but the average Joe Sixpack and kin seldom bother to look for such revelations. They are too busy playing Candy Crush.
Yes, that sort of blindness is precisely what TPTB have been trying to cultivate. But some of us can push through such shadows if we try.
I simply lack the talent for expressing how the things we fear aren’t what they appear. Yes, we are passing through a global economic melt-down. But it won’t hit you where you expect or in the ways you might hear about from the likes of Preppers. Yes, there will be blood in the streets, and maybe on your street, but it won’t be ubiquitous. Some of it will be hidden and some it fluffed up out of proportion because someone stands to gain from distorting the facts.
Again, it’s not for me to tell you how to read and filter out all that noise. Your perception of things isn’t really the issue, nor is mine. What matters is the same message coming from way back in the First Century. This world isn’t important, and most human activity that proclaims importance has none. Pitch a tent; don’t build a palace. Okay, build palaces as a hobby and art form, but not with any intent to shield yourself from human suffering. Invest your resources in the glory of Jesus’ name. That would lead only tangentially to investing much in human comfort, in the sense we can only do so much without taking care of this flesh. God has set for you a balance point between total neglect and rabid demands for perfect nutrition and fitness. Find your own fulcrum, and don’t be surprised if it moves now and then.
That business of glorifying Christ isn’t as complicated as most theologians want you to believe. I encourage you to toss out mainstream theological considerations as a trap designed to cripple your witness. Stick with the obvious message of the Scripture from the intellectual assumptions of the people who wrote it: Do what’s right. Commit yourself to the attitude written into the Law Covenants. Don’t slavishly obey them as if you are so very certain you can nail it all down with perfection. That simply substitutes your human intelligence for the real God. Read between the lines and absorb the deeper moral commitments; abstract it from the context with the sure knowledge you can’t always get it right.
Holiness is measured by desire, not any objective standard that a human can understand.
That sort of holiness is how you get through this time of tribulation. Just stick with your mission and don’t get distracted. Don’t be surprised by the most god-awful things that fall out of the sky or burst up from the pits of Hell. That stuff was always there, but kept from view by those who love it so much. We are in a time when there will be shocking revelations, shocking only because too many people preferred the comfortable lies. At the same time, evil will take on a radical boldness as all those nasty plans become obvious. What are you going to do about it anyway? TPTB have the upper hand and can afford the chutzpah. Still, I assure you from my personal experience that earth-shattering evil was always there, and I saw glimpses of it long ago.
You probably did, too, but perhaps some part of you just didn’t want to believe the enormity of it all. So believe it now. Just don’t get hung up on it. Your current life wasn’t worth much in the first place, so don’t fear — “loving not their lives unto death” (Revelation 12:11). That wrath of God on human sin will splatter on us while we remain on this plane of existence, but it doesn’t have our names on it. Those of us who claim the Cross have all the sacrifice God ever demanded under His Laws. We simply have to live out the message. Words mean nothing unless you give them shoes to walk and hands to work.
