⁷ He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. ⁸ But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” –Revelation 21:7-8

Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin, God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory. ii. By this sin, they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body. iii. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation. iv. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions. v. This corruption of nature, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both itself, and all the motions thereof, are truly and properly sin. vi. Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, doth, in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal. –Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter VI

I am not a proponent of the theology found in the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) as you know, not in toto. But chapter 6, where the doctrine of, so-called, total depravity is codified for Reformed Christians, in this instance, is a helpful indicative for how pervasive the effects of sin might well be. Embedded in this chapter we find what some have come to find objectionable, in regard to what has been called original sin, and its sort of genetic nature as it passes from one sinner to the next. Even so, for our purposes, no matter how we want to debate these issues, what WCF VI does, is at best, illustrate just how seriously and pervasive the fall of humanity (as narrated in Genesis 3) is. That said, I prefer to frame what happened in the garden in relational terms, which in an Athanasian key, means that humanity was plunged into sub-humanity until Christ came and re-created humanity in His; thus elevating humanity, in His vicarious humanity, into its proper orientation and telos vis-à-vis the living God. All of this noted: the point:: sin is destructive, deleterious, and damning. Sin, in the Christian frame, results in humanity’s inability to know God; and if humans cannot know God, they cannot rightly know themselves either.

This leads us to the Revelation passage. Look at the attributes in that list. These all flow from a heart turned in on itself (homo in se incurvatus); a heart that only knows itself without knowing God first. These attributes not only characterize our age, but they have characterized every age; we see them in concrete display in the Old Testament, and the salvation-history it covers. What I want to do now is to take a sharp turn from what you might have expected up to this point. I want to apply all of this to what we are seeing on full display for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. What I am referring to is how COVID19 is being used. For the rest of this post we will be operating in an eschatological turn. You might think, as you read the rest of this, that I am into so called conspiracy theories (terminology created by the CIA to marginalize American citizens who were openly questioning the assassination of John F. Kennedy). But this is why I started this post the way that I did. I want people to have the proper orientation as they read what I’m going to share. I want people to think through the lens that things are very evil; eviller than they want to believe things are. We all have our normalcy biases, meaning we prefer to live with a sense of comfort and wellbeing; even if we’ve only allowed ourselves to become conditioned by a level of chaos that only comes to seem ‘normal.’ No matter, what the Bible discloses is that in the ‘end’ there will be a sinister, global, and satanic power operative in the world that will seek to co-opt the economy of God and cause the world to bow its knee to it. In the book of Revelation this is identified by the language of ‘the Beast’ and the ‘False Prophet.’ Some (Richard Bauckham) have attempted to describe how this would have been understood by the first readers of the book of Revelation, and have limited these things to the past (preterist). But often what happens in the Bible, when it comes to apocalyptic and prophetic literature, is that there is more than one fulfillment of these things; usually a near and far referent—the former is a penultimate foreshadowing of the latter. So, if we think about the book of Daniel (especially chapter 11): we see foretelling prophecy of a figure who will come into the Temple of God and desecrate it through an abominable sacrifice therein. The near referent, or fulfillment of that, was Antiochus Epiphanes’ sacking of the Temple during the Maccabean period; the far referent was Titus’s sacking of Jerusalem in 70 ad. The point: we see this sort of organic principle active in biblical prophecy in many instances. As such, I can agree with someone like Bauckham, who wants to limit the details of fulfillment disclosed in the book of Revelation, to the early centuries of the church, and yet at the same time see an ultimate fulfillment of such things in a far context. That’s where I currently think we’re at.

Without being directly inspired by the Holy Spirit (like the authors of the New Testament), and only being one who has illumination by the Holy Spirit, when I approach the interpretive process of Holy Scripture, it does me will to tread lightly. With that noted, and wanting to avoid the sort of absolute pesher (‘this is that’) that the end times ‘Essenes’ cult engaged in, I do want to suggest that what we are experiencing in the world, right now, is a this is that scenario. As the Apostle Paul notes in an eschatological context:

But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. ² For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. ³ For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. ⁴ But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. ⁵ You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. ⁶ Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. ⁷ For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. ⁸ But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. ⁹ For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁰ who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. ¹¹ Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing. –I Thessalonians 5:1-11

What I think we should take from this, for one thing, is that Christians aren’t stupid (or shouldn’t be) when it comes to discerning the so called ‘signs of the time.’ That we have the capacity, in Christ, to be aware of concrete realities, prophetic realities, as we see them unfolding before our very eyes. The ‘day of the Lord,’ according to Paul, doesn’t come as a ‘thief in the night’ for Christians, but for pagans. Unfortunately, many Christians, have imbibed the ‘false lights’ of pagans, thus, enjoining the same spirit of the age as the pagans. In other words, many Christians think (most likely because of the excesses of many other Christians) that it is silly to think about the second coming of Jesus Christ in concreto; and the details that He said would be characteristic of that time. A lot of the fog surrounding this are the multitudinous interpretive frameworks scholars have developed toward interpreting prophetic books like Revelation, in particular. But it is more than that, I think. The pagan outlook, the one imbibed by many Christians, results in a destroyed Christian life because the Christian takes on a this-worldly encultuarized attitude that makes them think much of what the Bible teaches on ‘end times’ is foolish (if taken in a prima facie way). Paul, again, writes:

¹⁷ Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern. ¹⁸ For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: ¹⁹ whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things. –Philippians 3:17-19

The Apostle Peter also identifies this sort of pagan outlook about the time of the end this way:

Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder), ² that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, ³ knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, ⁴ and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” ⁵ For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, ⁶ by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. ⁷ But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. II Peter 3:1-6

Because of this sort of attitude, even Christians have come to mock other Christians who might dare to claim that it seems our age is characterized, in rather detailed ways, by the attributes that Jesus said would be at His second advent.

Let me be more to the point: Do you not see what it is happening in the world? Do you believe it is possible that there is a sinister scheme afoot, wherein a sinister cabal of demon possessed, sorcerer laden, sexually immoral, occultists, idolaterizing liars are attempting to lead the world into a global citizenry where they are worshipped as God? This is the picture that the NT provides us with. Have you not been paying attention to the hyper-censorship happening on social media outlets? How about the outright lies of mainstream media about COVID19? Are you aware of things like ID2020 funded by people like Bill Gates? How about so-called pizzagate? You know the elitist pedophile ring run by Jeffrey Epstein, and participated in by the Clintons, the Podestas, people like Tom Hanks, Will Smith, Will Ferrell, Jimmy Kimmel, Steven Colbert, Kevin Spacey, and a host of other elites listed on Epstein’s flight manifest (they all flew to and spent time on his pedo-island). Didn’t you watch the programming these very people presented on 04-18-2020 on all the mainstream channels; the production that, in the upper left-hand corner of your screen said “Global Citizens.” The production that is pushing for global vaccination for COVID19, which if you tie into ID2020 sounds eerily like what many Christians have believed about the time of the end for many decades? Don’t you believe that these things could be so; don’t you think that what the Bible describes about the human heart has this sort of concrete real life expression in the real world; or do you just think the Bible only is describing some sort of abstract reality that would never happen; or only ever happen in a different world from the one you inhabit?

People, ultimately, don’t want to come to terms with just how evil the human heart is. What the pagan doesn’t understand is that evil is so evil that it required GOD to become human in the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ, in order to destroy it. Have you ever thought about the depths of sin that way; or have you instead domesticated sin to what you experience in your day to day life (not good, but not that bad)? What if the depths of sin look like what the book of Revelation above is referring to? What if there are people who are so desperately depraved (like us) that they deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth (like the nations surrounding Israel back in the day)? Are you saying that you cannot fathom that there might be an organized, sinister, and demonic coup operative in the world that might just correlate to what the Bible has been foretelling of all along? Again, as Christians, we are sons and daughters of the Light; we should not be stupid about these things, not about the things surrounding the coming of Jesus Christ. Maybe what we are facing isn’t a this is that scenario, but I will be shocked if it isn’t. If you think this is just something we will ‘get past’ and move on with ‘normal’ life, I think you aren’t really paying attention to what is going on.

Let me close with this: Some Christians are of the attitude that even if what I just shared is accurate, they wonder: who cares?! Shouldn’t we just keep living our Christian lives, ‘plant a tree’ (like Luther), and seemingly plant our heads in the ground until Jesus comes again? At one level, sure. But the NT is too adamant about these things to take that approach in an absolute sense. In Mark 13 Jesus says about the ‘end,’ about His coming ‘Watch’! In light of the soon coming judgment of the world, and coming of Christ Peter writes:

¹⁰ But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. ¹¹ Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, ¹² looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? ¹³ Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. –II Peter 3:10-13

Recognizing the times we are living in, particularly when those times take on an intensity as never seen before, ought to drive us to live Holy lives that bear witness to the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world. We ought to plant trees, and work hard; and in these things, even in the midst of the moments when people are in Great Tribulation, point people to the hope of Jesus Christ. Though, like the commendable sons of Issachar in David’s army: “the sons of Issachar who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do . . . ,”[1] as Christians, we shouldn’t be ignorant about the ‘times’ we are living in. We have the ability to look out, and discern that something rather prophetic is unfolding before our very eyes. And in this, we are to live faithful Christian lives, serving as ‘watchman,’ as it were, working with an urgency to proclaim that Jesus is Lord. Working with a fervency, as we see the day approaching, to proclaim the bounty of the Evangel so that people might be transferred from ‘the kingdom of darkness’ to the ‘Kingdom of the Son of His love.’ Christians, of most people, ought to be testing the spirits to see whether what we are experiencing, is of the spirit of the anti-Christ or not? If the characteristics of the moment are intensely those we see characterized by the spirit of the anti-Christ, then we ought to be warning people, Christians and pagans alike, that what is before us requires vigilance and a repentant posture before the living God in the risen Christ. Maranatha

[1] I Chronicles 12:32a