It’s the devil’s show I’m talking about, not
God’s. I mean this present world.
The fact that it is the devil — Satan,
Lucifer, Abaddon, Beelzebub, the Serpent of Old — who is running the show
here on earth is not well understood in or outside religious circles, possibly
because so many have difficulty with the notion of personal evil. Social evil,
sure. Patriarchal evil, definitely. We’ll even maybe sorta kinda acknowledge
that once in a while there comes on the scene a man or woman so virulently depraved
that even a bad upbringing, lack of education, racism or poor social conditions
do not fully account for it. Who would blame Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother, after all?
But an invisible supernatural being pulling
the strings behind the scenes? A bit of a stretch. For the source of all the
bad news in this world, let’s look elsewhere.
Evil Enthroned
And yet the truth of evil enthroned within the
confines of our planetary atmosphere is easily affirmed from scripture. The
apostle Paul calls Satan the “god of this world”, or of “this age” and the “prince of the power of the air”. That’s not merely a Pauline doctrine: the Lord Jesus called him “the ruler of this world”.
Jesus even treated the devil as an
authority within his own sphere. Suppose you were offered the kingdoms of this
world in temptation as the Lord Jesus was. The logical response to “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” is “They’re not yours to give!”
Unless of course the kingdoms of this world and their glory DO belong to Satan, in
which case the Lord’s declining to use the obvious retort makes perfect sense.
The Genesis of Political Chaos
Once understood, this reality explains a
great deal about the genesis of the political chaos currently experienced
across the world. Those who peer behind great, sweeping, multi-decades-long,
multi-national movements like globalism looking for a human puppetmaster pulling
the strings are doomed to perpetual disappointment. Various sectors of the
public consciousness blame big corporations, or a sinister cabal of
billionaires, or a conspiracy of world leaders — and don’t forget the
world’s favourite designated scapegoat, “the Jews”.
I’ve probably left somebody out.
But the real bogeyman never quite reveals
himself. Tugging away at those visible strings gets us nowhere obvious. When Toto
pulls back the green curtain, neither a little old man nor Oz the Great and
Powerful is anywhere to be seen.
That’s because the real villain of the
piece is not George Soros, the Koch Brothers, Goldman Sachs or any other human
or combination of humans.
The Occasional Bout of Laughable Ineptitude
It also explains the occasional bout of
laughable ineptitude on the part of the Powers That Be: things like the failure
of the U.K. media to kill the momentum of the Brexit vote; the inability of the
combined forces of media, government and both the Republican and Democratic Parties
to prevent the election of Donald Trump; or even the referendum last week that led
to the resignation of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Such organized
globalist efforts must occasionally fail because the actors behind the scenes
are not real bogeymen or puppetmasters: they are just as much puppets as the rest
of Satan’s subjects.
It’s the devil’s show, you see. And because
he works through human agents, they are fallible, flawed and frequently at each
other’s throats.
I bet you thought the church was a mess,
didn’t you? But notwithstanding all its struggles, compared to Satan’s gang of
stooges, what Jesus Christ is building is spectacularly unified, coherent and glorious.
The Man-Exalting, God-Defying Human Unification Program
Only personal, supernatural evil can
possibly account for both the original Tower of Babel on the plains of Shinar in
Genesis and the present worldwide push for the same sort of man-exalting,
God-defying human unification program millennia down the road. But this modern
version is just as doomed as the original. The prophet Daniel has something to say about this attempt
to unite a modern, global kingdom:
“As the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay.”
Globalism is inevitable, but it cannot and
will not last. No global kingdom organized and managed by men can possibly
cohere. Iron does not mix with clay.
A Kingdom That Shall Never Be Destroyed
Daniel again:
“In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.”
So yeah, it’s the devil’s show. But not forever.
One day the seventh angel will blow his trumpet and loud voices in heaven will announce, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
Or put briefly: “Show’s over”. Praise the Lord.
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