To understand what God requires of us, I believe it’s important to think bigger than is common. On the one hand, we are nearing another exercise in God’s wrath on the scale of Noah’s Flood, but not a flood this time. On the other hand, it’s quite typical in terms of biblical prophecy that such destruction comes at a crescendo of human sin. Broadly, humanity is rapidly getting farther and farther from what God can tolerate.
It could be the End, but I don’t believe so. I believe it is our duty to prepare for what is on the other side of the coming series of catastrophes, man-made and natural.
An awful lot of people are jabbering on the Net about trends and expectations. It’s not that I would dispute the trends, but that these commentators have a typical tendency to see only one part of the bigger picture. I’m no smarter than they are, so I’m going to jabber about my own vision of what I see coming, but I would claim to see a bigger picture.
Yes, it starts with a cosmology that largely agrees with Michael S. Heiser in The Unseen Realm and his other related books. The whole point is seeking a biblical cosmology, and thus a biblical expectation. What would an ancient Hebrew mind make of current events?
The one we call “Satan” does have dominion over mortal humans. It’s limited; his dominion is subject to God’s limitations. Further, Satan is working with an alliance of members of God’s heavenly council. They have all been granted a measure of independence, and God is tolerating things because He’s trying to make a point that exceeds our comprehension. There’s a cosmic dispute and God is handling it with patience and grace, same as He does with us. We are the pawns, and we need to accept that.
Satan has his favorite nation on this earth, but by no means is he as kind and gracious as his Lord. That’s not his job, nor his inclination, from what we’ve been told. He has organized his friends in the divine courts to help him make a huge mess of humanity. They all have power to influence human behavior at large and individually. The only mitigation against this manipulation is to embrace the Covenant of Christ. Christ outranks all of them, but we are stuck here on Satan’s turf. And Satan is lying to his captives, leading them to destruction.
His chosen nation has a well-established plan to take over the world. Their primary weapon is deception, of course. Some of it they’ve professed openly, but there’s plenty that we can only guess at. One thing we do know is that they have helped to shape the formation of Western Civilization, and have been trying to tweak it ever since. Their plan is to use it as a weapon to destroy everyone who is part of that civilization. The West is destroying itself.
We should naturally assume they plan to do the same to Russia and China later on down the road, otherwise they cannot move any closer to their goal of world rule. However, we have very little idea how they plan to go about it. What we do know is how they’ve been destroying the West, because the plans have leaked for as long as they have existed — hidden in plain sight. Meanwhile, we can also recognize that Satan is lying to them about what he will grant them in the end, because he actually hates his favorite nation, too. He wants to destroy the whole human race; he has the help of human minions who serve their own destruction.
That’s the context. Thus, we know that those minions of Satan currently run the US government, though mostly indirectly. They rule generally through lackeys, and the lies are layered. There’s the nonsense the officials tell the public; there’s also the nonsense they believe, as revealed in leaks. They aren’t very competent, but if they fail to be persistent and faithful, they get treated like Trump. But the self-imagined elite rulers behind the scenes are also deceived about the ultimate end of things.
Ukraine was chosen as the expendable bait to capture Russia, but also to destroy the West. I’m pretty sure the West will fall first, but Satan’s Chosen will then expect to have a foothold in Russia. Their leverage there is rather weak right now. Goading Russia into war with the West/NATO should open them up to a far greater infiltration. It would appear that they will try to use Taiwan against China the same way they are using Ukraine against Russia.
The West is itching to send troops into Ukraine, never mind what is announced in the MSM. Russia hasn’t used much of her air power yet, but with F-16s on the way to Ukraine, a serious air war could get started. The West would use this for cover to get more directly involved. I tend to believe weapons of mass destruction will be used somewhere in all of this mess. See this analysis.
Meanwhile, China will displace the US as the global economic hegemon. China is already stronger than the US, and you should watch as the various international corporate CEOs attempt to make a nest for themselves in China’s markets. If not visibly, they’ll do it financially behind the scenes. If they happen to move their factories to India or some other BRICS participant, that’s still not moving back to the West, and it’s not leaving China’s sphere of economic influence.
As Covenant people, if you see this coming, what do you suppose we might do to prepare for a world under Chinese economic domination? Don’t make a mistake here; the nature of China’s outlook on things does not include plans to actually rule over foreign lands, turning them into colonies. Rather, China wants economic control to benefit herself.
What does our gospel mission to humanity require of us in the face of these thing?
“We are the pawns, and we need to accept that.” People should understand there’s nothing wrong being a pawn. The church is a pawn, too, but God doesn’t see us as ONLY a pawn.