The Bible Says This is What’s Coming
Inside: Amidst all the political unrest,
this is what we can do as we anticipate what’s coming!
Do you remember when you didn’t wake up each morning, remind yourself of all the current events, and wince?
Just yesterday, there was another fire, another shooting, and of course, there’s always the ongoing battle between the opposing political sides. How is it that the body of Christ finds itself straddling this fence?
And Lord, what is it that You’d have us do?
A while back, I attended a film festival about conflicts around the world.
One story sticks out above the rest.
In a documentary, a Vietnam vet told how he finally found healing after returning home as an alcoholic and going through two divorces.
While in Vietnam, the US soldiers had looted a village and he’d found a diary belonging to one of the local men. Years later, he had it translated back home and began to read it.
That’s when he realized that each of them, soldiers on opposing sides of a war, felt the same way.
The Vietnamese man wrote about his torturous existence. He wanted to go home because he didn’t even agree with what was going on anymore.
The American realized he could have written the diary himself.
Maybe your candidate lost this election.
And you’re feeling like it’s the end of the world. Or maybe you’ve been grieving for the last four years, and you finally feel relief.
But no matter how you vote, don’t you hate:
- that everything has become political
- tiptoeing around certain people that you love who feel differently
- the ongoing stress that makes this world feel like it’s a simmering pot just waiting to boil over
The thought caused me to go to the Word.
“Only God can give authority to anyone,
and he puts these rulers in their places of power.”
(Romans 13:1 CEV)
Then I read what Jesus said,
“Do you think I came to bring peace on earth?
No, I tell you, but division.
From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other,
three against two and two against three.”
(Luke 12:51-53, NIV)
And as I took a deep breath, I turned to Matthew 24.
The Bible says this is what’s coming.
It gives us a list of warnings. And even though I’ve read them many times before, they became too familiar to ignore.
It could have been scary, but the Lord got my attention with this,
“See to it that you are not alarmed.”
(Matthew 24:6)
We do what we know we can do.
We
- love anyway
- seriously commit to prayer for the world in a way we’ve never done
- listen to what the Lord has to say and do it, even when it seems radical
I know, none of this seems to make the difference that needs to be made, but none of this takes the Lord by surprise. He knows where we are in the whole story of creation.
And He knows what our assignment is.
This is what we’ve been hearing all along.
The Bible says this is what’s coming:
“Then, the Arrival of the Son of Man!
It will fill the skies—no one will miss it.
Unready people all over the world,
outsiders to the splendor and power,
will raise a huge lament as they watch the Son of Man blazing out of heaven.
At that same moment, he’ll dispatch his angels with a trumpet-blast summons, pulling in God’s chosen from the four winds, from pole to pole.”
(Matthew 24:30-31, The Message)
Image by Djane Daviss.
For those of us who are believers,
we believe that, right?
We believe that when the Bible says, “This is What’s Coming”
that it’s going to happen.
And we may be way closer to that day than we think.
If so,
what might we want to be doing
instead of cheering on a candidate?
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