Faithfully Balancing

I admit to an obsession: I waste a lot of time on Google Earth and similar mapping services to revisit the places I roamed in Europe thirty years ago. I watch videos of people hiking and biking those areas. Right now, I have a particular desire to ride a bike on the Venn Bahn, an old railway converted to a bikeway, running some 125 km between Aachen, Germany and Troisvierges, Luxembourg. What I wouldn’t give to roam the Ardennes again…

My virtual reminiscing is as close as I will ever get.

It has nothing to do with whether I can afford it; a passport and plane tickets aren’t the issue. I’m pretty sure I could work that out sooner or later. Hunkering down until this Coronavirus has run its course isn’t the issue, either. The virus isn’t really doing that much damage, if you take into context general illness and mortality rates. Rather, the damage was already there, and the virus panic has simply stripped away the lies. Our previous “normal” was just a pretense.

This is going to set loose all the fantasies of the plutocrats. Have you noticed how health experts are sounding like the worst fictional tyrants? They are programmed to think like they own us. Once in place, the social and financial controls will never be dismantled. It’s not about our well-being, but their convenience. Those controls might be relaxed, but they’ll always be there, just waiting for some trumped up excuse to reactivate them. Free travel for us little people is gone, gone for a lot longer than the duration of this plague. The middle class lifestyle in America is dead. But you could have seen this coming a long time ago; I’m sure some of you did.

But it won’t work for very long. Once it starts to hurt bad enough, some of the little people will start to fight back. Dystopian visions of competent oppression are a lie the oppressors have told for a long time. It will most certainly fall apart. That’s a part of the prophetic lesson here: God remains in full control of all things. As long as we reject His revelation of how to live in this fallen world, it will steadily go from bad to worse. However, He will not permit anyone to achieve their earthly dreams, and that includes the power elite. The greater the evil in human ambitions, the greater the fall will be when His wrath is stirred.

They will come close again, just like every other time in history. And then it will all be snatched away. In the process we will pass through a time of harsh tribulation. Breaking down tyranny and oppression is a nasty job, and it will call for unimaginable brutality to push back against the provoking unimaginable brutality. This is hard-wired into our fallen existence, so pretending that we can do things peacefully is a lie from Satan.

As always: This is not an apocalypse. It will come close, but it’s something less. It won’t make any difference if the armed resistance and riots start this summer or somewhere down the road; the stage has been set.

As for me — The Lord commanded me to continue preparing for the mission of bikepacking Oklahoma. There is a high probability I won’t be able to do very much of that anytime soon, but the path revealed to me still goes in that direction. I strongly suspect I’ll end up doing a lot of something else, but the only way I’ll be in the right place at the right time is to stay on the current path. Whatever I’ll be doing in Kingdom service still requires that new bike, and the camping gear, and the camera and laptop, etc. Oddly enough, the Lord pressed me hard about that laptop, to make sure it’s ready and that all my files are backed up on removable media, and in the cloud.

Do you recall how Jeremiah warned Judah to accept the new overlords from Babylon? Do that now with the new networked AI controls and surveillance. It’s humanity’s punishment; it’s the only way we’ll get things done from here on out. I don’t know how long we’ll be in exile in Babylon, but God will make it clear when the time comes to leave. Just play along for now; get used to it, but don’t lose touch with the demands of Biblical Law.

May the Lord speak to each of you about how to be faithful and balance things in your own life.