Such exposés reveal the world is broken, wicked, corrupt and
that in reality there are no 'good guys' to be found. There are lesser and
greater evils. We are pilgrims, suffering exiles and cross-bearers. The world
is at ease, building its kingdoms. It hates the forces that oppose it whether
their aims are political or not. As fallen man is a political creature he is
not capable of understanding our mindset and posture and thus he will be
suspicious of us and ultimately because we will not bow and submit to his
idolatry... he will hate us. Sadly the same is true of those who profess Christ
but still give themselves to the same fleshly political impulse.
Understanding the 'big picture' reveals not only these realities
but it will clarify who the traitors are within our midst, those who have
collaborated with the Beast in order to build a pseudo-Zion, those who
endlessly lie in order to make merchandise of God's people.
Anticipating the Jewish Wars a generation after the cross and
the destruction of Jerusalem, Christ warned his followers to discern the times
and then to do what? Flee to the mountains and wait. I believe the events
surrounding AD70 were a precursory and typological picture of the Final
Judgment, but given that the Abomination of Desolation would also seem to be
something that is repeated, finding fulfillment in Antiochus Epiphanes, in
Titus and (it would seem) in the events immediately preceding the Parousia, it
also follows (and this is in keeping with the reiterative prophetic vision
cycles throughout the Old Testament and even Revelation) that such events are characteristic of this age. In other
words these events repeat themselves as we march toward the eschaton. A
ramification of this understanding is that Christ's warnings in Matthew 24 are (at
least in general terms) applicable to the entire Church Age, and thus they
apply today.
Thus, it behooves us to understand the times so that we too
may flee to the mountains as it were,
not to Petra, but to whatever its equivalent may be in our own contexts. The
False Church reiterates the ethics of the Zealots and would call the Church to
take up the sword and fight.
We wait and just as the disciples and prophets have always
asked, we too wonder when shall these things be? We take comfort from the vision
granted to Zechariah in response to the State of the World Report. The craftsmen-carpenters
(angelic entities to be sure) will come and destroy the horns which have been
lifted up against the Heavenly Zion, the Kingdom-Ecclesia of Christ. The
imagery when coupled with the parallel visions (particularly in chapter 5)
suggests an altar motif which hints that the persecution of God's people is not
just from the Beast powers (such as Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome) but also
from a pseudo-Zion, the traitors who 'swear falsely by my name', those who have
abandoned being the Bride but instead have become the woman 'Wickedness', the
apostates of Babylon-Shinar. As Kline points out this imagery is picked up in
Revelation 11 with Jerusalem (the Church in the context of Revelation) being identified
as Sodom and Egypt, which persecutes and silences the Two Witnesses... the
imagery of which harks back to Zechariah and can be identified as the Remnant
Church.
This breaking of the horns (the symbols of power) in
Zechariah 1 is something that finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Parousia
but it would seem it also happens in an anticipatory-symbolic way throughout
history. While history moves toward the eschaton, along the way there are
micro-cycles of empires rising and falling, periods of renewal and apostasy.
The beast-hydra's horned head is reared up and dies, and yet is reborn. Its
final defeat will come only with Christ who is (in terms of the Zechariah 1
vision) the True Carpenter-Craftsman or in this sense, the bringer of demolition
and judgment.
When shall these things be? The carpenters will come and
destroy the horns which have been lifted up against Zion. It happens on a
micro-cyclical scale throughout history as the hydra head dies and yet is reborn
but ultimately this is not fulfilled in the consummate sense until Christ
comes. We are not called to break the horns but we are called to cast down
their arguments, the potency of their thoughts and to bear witness against them
– the Beast nations and their agents. We can't do that when the Church is busy
syncretising the lost thinking and philosophies of the world with Christian
doctrine. We can't do that when we've sold out and become one of the horns, one
of the hydra-heads.
The more I began to dig into the world system, history and
current events, the more I was appalled to realise just how evil it all is, and
how involved and intertwined the Church is within it. While I think many would
easily acknowledge the world's evil and corruption in terms of money and power,
how many would understand the Church is actually in the thick of it?
Financially invested in the Beast system, the Church, its leaders and members
are also personally involved in the evil and on another level there are deep
emotional and spiritual ties which have been fostered and promoted by
generations of false teachers and apostate witness.
The digging, investigating and reflecting have exposed a deep
and cancerous rot. The money and power the 'Church' has embraced has resulted
in theft, murder and abomination. As suggested earlier, it happened before, in
the days of Constantine and went through various recastings throughout the
Middle Ages. The Reformation decried the corruption and abuses of the Papacy
but caught up in the political struggle of its day and refusing to eschew and
reject the foundational doctrines, it embraced yet another expression of the
same error. It was like the proverbial dog that returns to its vomit. Even in
the subsequent history of Protestantism this process has been repeated and it
is alive and well in our day. In the 20th century various
ecclesiastical movements and institutions in the most powerful empire in
history embraced it anew, in yet another manifestation. An impetus for
ecumenical collaboration, the understanding of the Kingdom of Christ as a
Right-wing variety of Capitalist 'Judeo-Christian' Western Civilisation has
spawned a host of evils and represents a grave and existential threat to the
Church... if such a thing is possible. While the Church cannot fail, the
apostasy can become so pervasive that the true voice of the Church seemingly
dies and is eradicated. This has happened before and we're in danger of it even
now. God's will be done and Judgment is certainly due. Few have properly
appreciated the magnitude of the crimes and the sin in which the so-called
Church is involved. To understand this one must understand the world system...
the system praised by the false teachers who also obfuscate its many evils and
in some cases celebrate them.
We can safely say and must say the would-be Bride has turned
whore once more. The woman who fled into the wilderness has been corrupted and
now has become a harlot who has joined forces with the Beast. It's not the
first time this has happened but we may pray it is the last.
But we can also pray for restraint and respite, hoping that
more time and mercy will be granted and that eyes can be opened and souls can
be saved. We can hope that this mercy will lead to the manifestation of a
remnant, of a spiritual opposition that will bear witness and glorify God. Dark
days are ahead but amid the darkness we may also find something of a golden
age... though lost thinking and wisdom will not reckon it as such.
And if not, we'll tell the truth anyway so that somewhere
there will be a testimony to the truth, that someone somewhere will be exposing
their deeds. And if no one listens we'll shout into the air, from the
housetops, even into the ether-void of cyberspace. It must be said because the
truth burns within us and we must cry out and proclaim it, even if no one will
listen.
But to understand what the Church is involved in and the
forces and powers at work in the world... like it or not we have to spend some
time looking at the wider world and its system. Not all will be interested and
not all will even have the capacity to understand it. And to a degree that's
fine, but these things need to be said and bit by bit some will come to a
fuller understanding. Some will rise to the challenge and some (we hope) will
begin to see.
See also: