Another vision shook me yesterday.
There aren’t many of us who will hear the call to a heart-led faith life. Only a few are determined to make a high level of sacrifice to get as close as possible to the biblical ideal. Granted, there are plenty who don’t feel led, and I can’t criticize their choice, because you can’t do this on your own steam. And please remember that having that steam doesn’t make you special, but may simply make you very much a nonconformist. It does put us outside the mainstream by a very wide margin.
Big hint: We do not reference the mainstream until it comes to tactics. They get no input into any part of the formative process. Everything is a pure vision of obedience to the divine call, regardless of what anyone else is doing.
We are in the same boat as Noah (pun intended). God is providing us what we need to prepare for a real major disaster. Not necessarily a physical disaster that wipes out humans and animals, but a really big change that will seem in many ways like having to rebuild from scratch. Instead of such a massive natural disaster, it will be a social upheaval that will include a strong element of persecution.
We can ride it out, but we will be more alone than ever when we get to the other side. I’m pretty sure whatever mainstream organized religion that survives will be radically different from what it is now. I can’t discern from here what this change will demand of them, except that it has to do with a rise in technocracy and AI.
When Noah went into the Ark, the whole land mass of the earth was in a single continent. The flood completely changed the face of the earth. The permanent cloud cover over the earth was gone, too. The Flood set in motion a series of changes that kept flowing over the next few generations, so that the single land mass divided into multiple continents over a very short time (look up the name “Peleg” in the Bible). It was a whole new world for Noah.
It will feel like that for us. We need to make sure we take full advantage of what our Lord provides to pass through this tribulation. I don’t think we have nearly as long as Noah did building his boat. And we won’t be using gopher wood.
Our boat will be made from the determination to get as close to that ideal shalom as we can get. But what unsettled me most was the image of just how earth-shattering will be this big change coming at us. The mission to preserve the truth God has granted us becomes much more critical.
