CHAOTIC TIMES

As I write this article, half of the year 2020 has gone. Soon I realised that this would be a troubling year, but I had no idea how troubling it would be. It now seems that the world has started a new age - a chaotic age I rather say.

Early in the year it started with the news of devastating locust plagues, where swarms of billions of locusts dozens of miles across swept into large areas across India and Pakistan, the Middle East and into Africa - areas that could ill afford huge losses of cropland and other vegetation.

That plague had barely made the headlines (it’s now in its second, even more destructive wave) before a plague of a different sort, Covid-19, came to dominate the news for several months.This virus-caused disease has taken several hundred thousand lives and thrown the entire world economy into a tailspin.

As if the thousands of pandemic deaths and hospitalizations weren’t enough, governments and political leaders claimed sweeping new powers over virtually every aspect of citizens' lives, trampling on many rights enshrined in national constitutions - and in the process bringing what is proving to be even more deaths and economic destruction that could've been avoided.

And now another plague is dominating the headlines. Unlike the natural plagues of locusts and corona-virus, this one is entirely human-caused, a plague of social unrest and breakdown of law and order such as hasn’t been seen in decades.

Yes, this certainly looks like a chaotic era. Some of you may think that I am being presumptuous but I am really not, I view it as a statement of humility because of the source of my understanding - God's Word and His revelation. This is not my understanding but God's understanding. It is His perspective of what is happening and affecting the direction in which our world is sailing to. These plagues have been foretold in the pages of the Bible for thousands of years. A time of judgment and justice is coming on us. And to be clear, I am not saying we are now experiencing the fulfillment of these prophecies.These events are a wake-up call, they are a taste of what lies ahead.

When Jesus was asked about the prophetic indicators of His coming, He responded that "there will be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in various places" (Mathew 24:7)

Covid-19 has shown how fragile our assumptions can be. So far, ironically, the advanced Western nations have been among those hardest hit. And although it's largely been pushed out of the headlines, this pandemic continues its march across the globe.

To make matters worse what about the latest plague hitting the headlines, the wave of social unrest and breakdown of order that in just a few days spread like wildfire across the United States and then to much of the rest of the world?

In Mathew 24:7, before mentioning famines and pestilences, Jesus foretold something else: "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom..."

The Greek word used for 'nation' is 'ethnos', from which we get the English words ethnic and ethnicity , referring to racial or cultural subgroups of people.

'Kingdom' is the Greek word 'basilea' the equivalent of a political national entity today.

In verse 12 of the same chapter, Jesus also foretold that "lawlessness will abound". While this specifically refers to God’s holy law as summarized in the Ten Commandments, it also refers in a general sense to humanity's growing rebelliousness and violence similar to Noah’s day (verses 37-39), when mankind’s corruption had reached the point that God cleansed the earth of the entire human race with the exception of Noah’s family.

This should not be surprising, considering the way God describes our human condition in Isaiah 59:8: "The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths" (English Standard Version).

Listen and pay attention - you have much to gain. And those who don't heed have much to lose!