How’s the tribulation going for you?
I don’t suffer from the common evangelical End Times mythology. This should establish a clear separation between them and me. If you are a glutton for torture, try my analysis of John’s Apocalypse. In particular, I don’t embrace their persecution complex. Tribulation is a fancy word that means difficult times in general for everyone.
Whatever you might imagine America to have been at some time in the past, that’s gone now. It’s not coming back. The whole world is on a path toward increasing chaos, but I am quite certain the lion’s share will manifest here in the US. I became certain of that at least two decades ago. In more recent years, it became a firm prophetic word for me, at least: America is doomed and resisting the police state is generally a sin, because it’s a necessary phase of that destruction.
But that doesn’t do much to explain what we experience here on the ground. I would never have dreamed twenty years ago what I see now with my own eyes. It’s not enough that we have spread chaos and violence around the world, but that we do so with loud pretensions of doing everyone such a great service.
While bombing and stirring up strife in other places, we have an invasion from Central America underway. Those coming are typically from the poorest, most distressed and diseased portion of their populations. Oh, and they bring their gang affiliations with them. And our government is actively paying for this invasion, advertising and provoking those folks to come here. Whole plane-loads of them are distributed around the country. In return, we export the most painfully oppressive laws and restrictions under the guise of “trade freedom.”
I could go on at length, but you get the idea. Our government officials are being used to piss off everyone, here and abroad. We are being set up for some truly incredible false-flag attacks that will make 9/11 pale in comparison. Whoever is behind all this desperately wants to see war break out here in the US, and they are using American political figures to provoke it. Don’t bother naming names, because it won’t change anything.
God will not stop them. Nor will He permit anyone on this earth doing so. This is our just deserts. If you understand anything about biblical morality and the underlying gospel message, you realize that we as the self-proclaimed crowned jewels of Western Civilization are the greatest of sinners for carrying that evil to its logical conclusion. Indeed, if anything, God will add unspeakable natural disasters to make sure we go down.
It’s just getting started. What to do?
Prepare for more suffering. Everyone will suffer, but we have the truth that helps us understand that suffering is the natural human condition. This isn’t direct persecution, just the background noise of times shifting and drifting. Naturally, striving to live by divine justice will mitigate some of this. In general, though, our reason for living is the divine message that suffering is in some sense just an illusion, because this entire realm of existence is illusory. Don’t get lost in the human factors, but use them as a springboard for truth.
The saints of God will tribulate. Even if we are near the End of All Things, our message and mission do not change one whit. Let Him return to find us faithful. Of that day and hour, no man knows, not even the Son. Therefore, stand firm in the spiritual armor that keeps us just before the watching world. Don’t confuse intellectual principles with divine truth; stand your ground morally, not philosophically. Don’t blow up at the incredible folly you will surely see, the vast waste of resources, the unimaginable hatred and violence, etc. Embrace the divine cynicism that expects worse than the mind can imagine.
Prepare to bear the sorrow with grace and look forward to God’s reward of taking us Home.
