Sea Change

Primordial disorder is the image presented at the opening of the creation account in Genesis. The earth, formless and empty (tohu wabohu), was completely covered by a deep (tehom) sea.

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. – Genesis 1: 1-2

Earth’s oceanic outer layer undergoes a sea change when the Spirit of God’s hovers.

Psalm 104: 5-9 describes, in poetic form, the ordering of the watery chaos:

He set the earth on its foundations;
    it can never be moved.
You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment;
    the waters stood above the mountains.
But at your rebuke the waters fled,
    at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;
they flowed over the mountains,
    they went down into the valleys,
    to the place you assigned for them.
You set a boundary they cannot cross;
    never again will they cover the earth.

Reading on in Psalm 104 (v. 10-13) we find function. Channeled water provides the basic necessity for life on earth. Food growth follows.

Chaos Creatures Serve a Function

Once the chaotic waters of the primordial sea had been assigned functions, God, on the fifth day, created sea monsters, figures of menacing chaos (Gen. 1:21). Why bring order and then allow chaos creatures to exist? By God’s wisdom, we live in a world that has order, non-order, and disorder (See video below).

Mythical creatures from pagan myths, function in scripture as symbols of primordial chaos and opposition to God: sea-monsters, serpents, beasts, and dragons. Revelation presents them as fighting against God’s faithful witnesses who are working to restore order and bring God’s kingdom on earth.[i]

Sea Change Number Two

God created (gave functions to) the material cosmos over six days. Genesis 1 is a day-by-day account of establishing order from primordial disorder, establishing anthropic conditions and temple building. God pronounced each step in functional readiness “Good.” On the seventh day, he ‘rested’ in his temple to survey what had been done. The temple garden is a metaphor for the world.

Genesis 2. Mankind is placed in the temple garden and given instructions to maintain the good by God. But mankind goes off in a disordering direction. Evil and chaos ensues. God then acts to undo creation with the flood waters of chaos[ii] and to restore his “good” creation. Noah is the new caretaker.

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So, God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. . .

I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. Genesis 6: 11-13, 17

Sea Change Recalled

One day, Jesus’ disciples wanted Jesus to notice the temple buildings. Jesus then foretold the destruction of the temple. The perplexed and anxious disciples asked “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

Jesus goes on to speak of the signs of the end of the age. He then speaks about the necessity of watchfulness for, he tells them, no one knows the day or hour when end things will come to pass. To underscore this, he references a familiar story that involved a cataclysmic event that caught many unprepared.

 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. – Matthew 24:36-39

History Lesson About the Moral Universe

The apostle Peter, in his second letter, tells his readers that there are scoffers who are saying that things on this earth have always continued the way they are now. He reminds them that this is not true. The earth was different when it was created and it was different again after the flood. He warns them that no one should scoff that God will make it different once again, judging the godless not with water but with fire. (2 Peter 3)

Jesus’ second coming will be a sea change for all of creation. Chaos will be removed.

It is Time for a Sea Change

Peter warned his readers, with reference to the Great Flood, about what can be expected if they continue as they are. John the Seer, alluding to the Great Flood in Revelation, writes that it is time (in his prophetic timeline) “for destroying those who destroy the earth.” – Revelation 11:18

“The ‘destroyers of the earth’ are the powers of evil: the dragon, the beast, and the harlot of Babylon (who in [Rev.] 19:2 is said to have ‘corrupted – or destroyed – the earth with her fornication’). With their violence, oppression, and idolatrous religion they are ruining God’s creation. His faithfulness to his creation requires that he destroy them in order to preserve and deliver it from evil. . .  This he did in the flood, which was a divine judgement aimed at delivering God’s creation from the ruinous violence of its inhabitants.”[iii]

John the Seer wrote Revelation in the context of the tyranny of the Roman Empire, the imperial cult, and a permissive and polytheistic culture. The apostle Paul, in the same setting, writes to a church with a more detailed description of the ruinous inhabitants of the earth and their similar fate:

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, men who engage in illicit sex, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, swindlers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.  -1 Corinthians 6:9-10

I imagine that the proud, the perverse, the purposefully vague, the self-serving, and those who want to create a new humanity with demonic forces[iv] – any who plunder the created order for power, wealth and self-righteous ends will be met with divine judgement. Some will receive punishment that matches their sin (Rev. 16:8; 18:6; Rev. 22:18-19).

John the Seer prophesied about an end time involving a series of warning judgements to bring about repentance and the ultimate restoring of creation’s order from mankind’s reversion of it to chaos.

Final Sea Change

Scripture begins by telling an old story and ends by retelling the old story with a new and final outcome. Both narratives involve chaos and creation. The lynchpin of the two theological narratives – Genesis 1-11 and Revelation – and of history itself is the earthly, risen, and returning Jesus.

A final sea change occurs to restore creation. John the Seer writes:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no moreRev. 21:1

Creation is not destroyed, just as it wasn’t with the Great Flood. Rather, creation’s corrupting influence is removed. Think in terms of no longer being overcome by evil but the overcoming of evil with good. Think in terms of “if anyone is in the Messiah, there is new creation! Old things have gone, and look – everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17)

“The waters of the primeval abyss, that represent the source of destructive evil, the possibility of the reversion of creation to chaos, are finally no more.”[v]

~~~~~

Lent is a time for a sea change. It’s a time to remove chaos from your life.

This Lent appears to be the first time that corruption, misuse of funds, money laundering, excess, and disorder in the government are being shown the detox door. Hence, the weeping and gnashing of teeth in the MSM. Hence, destroyers of the earth want the chaos to continue as before.

A leviathan in Washington recently surfaced. What emerged was corrupt and destabilizing influence involving actors in the State Department, the Department of Defense, the “deep state”, the unaccountable administrative state, the unchecked CIA meddling in foreign affairs and a politically motivated FBI meddling in internal affairs, activist DOJ and federal judges, shady non-profits, and the propaganda of the MSM to maintain cover for the chaos.

Maelstroms are sucking us in: a proxy war with Russia, Middle East conflicts, a huge federal deficit, out of control spending by Congress, the Green New Deal wealth redistribution scam, and what to do with the over 12 million illegal economic migrants bringing with them neediness, disease and crime.

In the first 50 days of the Trump administration, ICE reported arresting over 14,000 convicted criminals, 9,800 migrants with pending criminal charges, 1,155 suspected gang members, and 44 foreign fugitives.

An additional 8,718 arrests were categorized as “immigration violators.”

ICE has arrested 32,000 violent criminals in Trump’s first 50 days.

And there’s a new beast on the horizon – AI.

AI is being touted as a new pathway to greater productivity (Why do we need that? For greater profits? To be unburdened by what has been?). It is said that disruptive AI will transform the workplace, replace jobs, shake up economies and reshape global alliances. Our world, with Promethean AI, will look different by 2030. AI will look at us differently, too.

~~~~~

Dr. John Walton, Job, Lecture 25, The world in the Book of Job: Order, non-order and disorder


[i] The creation of the “sporty” Leviathan (Ps. 104:26), a creature that cannot be tamed, shows us God’s mastery over powerful creatures. Leviathan was used metaphorically to instruct Job (Job 41). Job (a behemoth-like creature) cannot tame God to his ideas of how the world works.

[ii] Consider that several ancient Near East accounts of a devastating flood were understood as a god using force to restore order in the world. See Genesis 6-9 for the theological interpretation of the mythic flood.

The writer of the Genesis Flood account, using hyperbole, wanted to impress upon the reader the theological implications of a universal “cataclysmic event” that occurred to restore creation. There was no global deluge, as science has determined and Ps 104: 9 indirectly states. No matter. The author wanted the reader to understand the theological significance of God’s act.

See also Genesis and the Flood: Understanding the Biblical Story – Article – BioLogos;

The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate

The Flood – Undeceptions

[iii] Bauckham, Richard. (1993/2018). The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Cambridge University Press, 1993. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511819858. PP 52

[iv] Yuval Harari, historian and futurist, gay Israeli and WEF advisor comes to mind and so does the N.I.C.E., The National Institute of Coordinated Experiments in That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

[v] Ibid 53

~~~~~

Protect our food supply from the Cure worse Than the Problem

Action Over Talk: Join the Nationwide Protest Against Food Supply mRNA!

This Friday, Americans across the country are coming together to take a stand. Concern is growing as Secretary Rollins moves closer to approving mRNA vaccines for the beef, dairy, and poultry industry to combat diseases like Avian Flu. Many are voicing their opposition, demanding that these vaccines not be used in our food supply.

 Make Your Voice Heard! Flood Secretary Rollins’ email with your concerns:

AgSec@usda.gov

Contact Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins of whitehouse

Here is a structured email template for Secretary @BrookeLRollins:

Subject: Immediate Halt to Meat Supply Vaccination

Dear Secretary Rollins,

As Americans who supported the election of Donald J. Trump, we are deeply concerned about your plan to introduce vaccines into our nation’s meat supply, including pork, cattle, poultry, and even seafood.

We do not merely request a pause—we demand a complete and permanent stop to this effort. The American people will not accept government-mandated intervention in our food supply, especially without full transparency and consent.

If the USDA continues to push forward with testing and implementation of the H5N1 vaccine, we are prepared to take action. Our voices will not be ignored, and we will make it clear to President Trump that millions of Americans oppose this overreach.

We stand firm in our right to protect our food, our health, and our families. This is non-negotiable.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your State]

With the news that mRNA vaccinated beef, dairy, eggs, and poultry are already in the food supply, some are demanding to know where our Secretary of Health is. You’ll be pleased to know he’s practicing self-care with long walks in the mountains, while currently reposting advice from the CDC. 

https://x.com/SecKennedy

Evil’s Last Grasp

“Dog Bites Man.” Not news. Madness – “Man Bites Dog” – is a headline! And so is nauseating “ultra-violence” (a term used in the disturbing A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick’s film version of Anthony Burgesses’ book).  To wit, a small sample of recent “ultra-violence” revelations in the headlines:

Cops identify NJ woman as mystery straphanger torched to death in horrific NYC subway attack

A homeless woman in the NYC subway was set on fire by an illegal immigrant who fanned the flames and then calmly watched her burn to death from a bench on the platform.

And, A mob attack at Edina Southdale YMCA leaves teen with brain injury

And, Metro-North rider stabbed in chest after complaining about loud music on passenger’s phone

And, NYC postal worker stabbed to death over food.

And, Transgender Teen Charged with Plotting Valentine’s Day School Massacre.

And, with taxpayer money, USAID funded Boko Haram slaughter of Christians in Nigeria – LeoHohmann.com

And, 70 Christians beheaded in church by Muslims.

To keep “ultra-violence” going Biden admin released 11 Yemeni detainees with suspected al Qaeda ties from Guantanamo Bay — including two alleged former bin Laden bodyguards

And, 158 DEMOCRATS VOTED AGAINST DEPORTING SEX OFFENDERS

Day after day headlines reveal man-made horrors beyond our comprehension and of absurdities that become received wisdom. Two more recent headlines:

Warrant executed for ‘child pornography’ at Texas Modern Art Museum’s LGBTQ exhibit… – Revolver News

Fauci approved $240 million for sexual mutilation (transgender) experiments on animals.

Shocking and bizarre evil permeates the moral order of the universe. And it is not ideological ordinariness, as seen by Hannah Arendt in her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil:

Perhaps our age does not like the idea of evil or does not know what to make of it. And yet if there is one thing that we ought to be able to do, it is to identify true evil—the profundity of evil—when we see it. In our own day, it is put on display for all to see by death-cults like Hamas.“The profundity of evil,” by Douglas Murray

‘Pure Evil’: Hamas Hands Over Remains of Dead Israeli Mother, Toddler & Infant

Hamas holds public celebration to hand over murdered babies in coffins.

Along with the use of extreme force to hurt or kill people, evil in the form of disorder, lies, chaos, corruption, grift, and utter perversion is in the news.

Here in America, the Progressive Blue Beast, allied with the primeval source of all opposition to God, refuses to give up its hold on its imperial capital. With the aid of the imperial cult propaganda machine – the main stream media – it whines, panders for sympathy and looks for ways to claw back power to continue its rule of tyranny.

It wasn’t long ago when the same propaganda machine told us to “trust (worship) the science.” We were told to pay homage to the idol the Blue Beast had created with masking, social distancing, and vaxxing the COVID mRNA spike protein vaccine into our bloodstream.

(Did you know? Yale Scientists Confirm Covid ‘Vaccines’ Cause VAIDS – Slay News  VAIDS = vaccine-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. One has to wonder if the COVID vax was used for population control. Was it used to keep the population weak, sick, and controlled? To create complete dependency on Big Pharma’s “science?”)

Remember, the Blue Beast told us to believe in the Russian collusion hoax and in many other lies that came from its mouth.

The last four years of the Biden regime and the eight years of Obama have given us a eye-opening look at the direction and speed with which evil can overtake aspects of our lives. The evil processes of the Blue Beast from those days have become so entrenched that activist federal judges are blocking the eradication of it from government. (Be aware that programs like discriminatory DEI, like all of evil’s deceptive programs, is the moral opposite of (social) justice. See Solzhenitsyn quote below.)

The Blue Beast worships power and itself and tolerates no rivals. Evil in all of it various forms (serpent, dragon, and human) and devices, and throughout time, worships power and itself. Evil tolerates no rivals, and certainly not the Risen and Conquering Christ that the prophecy of Revelation testifies about.

~~~

First century Christians, without newspapers and headlines, saw and heard about violence, oppression, and idolatries in the Roman Empire. Their world, like ours and Job’s, seemed arbitrarily mean, capricious and unfair.

These early Christians knew the enemies of God in terms of satanic forces invested in polytheism, the Roman empire’s tyranny, the imperial cult propaganda and the pressure to submit to it. And, there were those preaching another gospel other than the one they received from the apostles. The power of evil was all around them and they were looking for a divine rescue.

They were also likely aware of gospel accounts of Jesus exorcizing unclean spirits and plundering the strong man’s house (Mk 3:27). For them, awaiting Christ’s imminent return, these accounts prefigured a final victory over evil and the final realization of the kingdom of God on earth. Into that context at the end of the first century, seven struggling churches in a Roman province in Asia received a wake-up call, the letter of Revelation.

The letter begins by addressing issues in each church through a prophetic word. There’s critique of a church’s waywardness, its false teaching, its lethargy and compromises. And there are warnings to get each church on track to be victorious. The letter effectively summons each church to get involved in the divine war against evil and to conquer, conquer, conquer, conquer, conquer, conquer, conquer (Rev. 2:7; 2:11; 2:17; 2:28; 3:5; 3:12; 3:21).

How they are to conquer and what victory means is described in the rest of the letter. (Hint: conquering in Revelation has nothing to do with how the world conquers. And victory? There’s a promise that comes at the end of the letter referring to what was promised at the beginning of the letter to each church that conquers (Rev. 21:7).

You will want to read the whole of Revelation in one sitting to find out about Evil’s Last Grasp (cf. Gen. 3:15) and whether the three petitions of the Lord’s prayer are fulfilled. Is God’s name hallowed? Does his Kingdom come? Is God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven?

What would be the Final Headline and will you be one of those who were victorious over the beast? (Rev. 15:2)

~~~~~

The Big Reveal

Everyone who does evil hates the light; people like that don’t come to the light, in case their deeds get shown up and reproved. -The Gospel According to John 3:20

2025: The most transparent administration in American history is following the money . . .

The recent incursion of DOGE into the labyrinth of government has made headlines. As DOGE sheds light on what lurks there, deep state denizens are scurrying to use measures to hide their dark ways:

Eruption In “BleachBit,” “Wipe Hard Drive,” “Offshore Bank” Searches In DC Suggest Deep State Panic Mode | ZeroHedge

DC Internet Searches For “Criminal Defense Lawyer” & “RICO Law” Erupt As DOGE Drains Swamp

Martha Bueno on X: “These Senators voted AGAINST cutting the federal budget $1.5 trillion dollars. They say they want accountability but vote against it. Which one is the biggest hypocrite here? https://t.co/E8GhjljHZ2” / X

~~~~~

As in A Clockwork Orange, where a government agency works to rehabilitate the violent criminal Alex with an experimental aversion therapy, the World has had ongoing attempts at manipulating humans with mind control programs. Such are the CIA psyops, MSM propaganda, AI, brain chips, transhumanism, and more.

How Did Communism Get into the Corporations

~~~~~

Podcast:

Andrew Klaven with Megan Basham discuss her book, Shepherds for Sale.

Churches are being infiltrated – Megan Basham with Andrew Klaven

~~~~~

The evil that State media doesn’t report: Democrats illegally allowed into our country over 12,000,000 unvetted (and unvaccinated) aliens. The migrants were brought in for Democrat’s purposes: to consolidate Democrat power with votes and to support Democrat’s billionaire benefactors with low-cost workers. The illegals are to become serfs serving their welfare state lords.

The open borders madness was aided by Progressives in pulpits and by USAID-funded NGOs who participated and became rich (nonprofit Catholic Relief Services received $4.6 billion, cf. Rev. 3:14–22 ) helping the ‘poor little foreigner’ based on some misconstrued scripture.

It is certainly costs nothing to be ‘magnanimous’ and free with other people’s taxed money, property, freedom, safety, and our vulnerable children when sitting in your safe neighborhood virtue signaling the ‘goodness’ of open borders and ‘helping’ the ‘poor little foreigner’ in a social media text or a sermon.

You will hear from the creepy SJ James Martin on ‘X’ that “Caring for migrants and refugees Is not optional.” This kind of debauched out-of-context and Christian-sounding mumbo-jumbo for the ‘other’, directed toward the gullible – SJWs, suburban women, soy boys, and the like – is used by Martin to justify open borders, not just of our country but also for all kinds of sexual perversion in the church. Have you heard of the Lavender Mafia?

U.S. Catholic Church Spends $5 billion on 16,276 Clergy Sex Abuse Allegations in 20 Years

Four in five victims were male and one-fifth of the victims were female, the survey recorded, confirming reports by The Stream and other experts of a “lavender mafia” dominating the Latin-rite Roman Catholic priesthood.

Beware These 3 Lavender Mafias Outside the Church| National Catholic Register

 Myopic, naïve, unwise, illegal, and compromised ‘compassion’ does more harm than good. Self-righteous compassion under the guise of “social justice” has become more important than the greater good.

Of course, if you speak out against open borders you are called “mean”, “racist”, a “xenophobe”, “unscriptural’, and more.

Apparently, ‘compassionately’ aiding and abetting foreigners in breaking U.S. law and thereby importing violence, narco-terrorism, fentanyl deaths, criminal gangs, drugs, felons, pedos, all kinds of disease, and economic migrants who flee their own country for a better ‘opportunity’ is OK as long as you help the “vulnerable” plunder and gut America and disregard the fact that our neighbors are made vulnerable to the above and to the chaos, disorder, disease, and cost that open borders causes.

Democrats have “invited every microbe on the planet onto our soil. And, now we are facing the consequences.”

Deporting Illegals Is A Good First Step, But Unfortunately The Microbes They Brought With Them Will Stay

The Immorality of Illegal Immigration – Victor Davis Hanson

Todd Bensman Discusses the Costs of Illegal Immigration

Interview with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: The Pope’s Accusations Against the Trump Government are False and Delusional

More plundering of America enabled by the wicked. Activist federal judge is blocking deportation. His wife is “appears to be the former Vice President of National Immigration Forum, a pro-open borders advocacy group.”

“George Soros’s Open Society Foundation is also reportedly the group’s largest donor.”

~~~~~

“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions…
Ideology—that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

Reentry

April 1961. The first human to travel into space returned to Earth after traveling 17,500 mph for 108 minutes. He circled the earth once at a maximum altitude of 203 miles.

About 4.35 miles above the Earth, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin ejected from Vostok 1, a pressurized spherical capsule just two meters wide. He parachuted to the ground.

This first of its kind scientific event made Gagarin a space hero and made for a compelling narrative for the Soviet system to promote socialism and scientific atheism:

“For Soviet Communism, cosmonauts were utopianism made flesh – Socialist Realist heroes come to life – and Socialist Realism and socialist reality were never closer than during the Soviet space age.”[i]

After Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, Soviet leaders during the Khrushchev era (1953-1964) were eager for a return to party purity. Stalin had given up trying to purge religion from Soviet Russia. He had wanted to produce an atheist society. But after seeing that the stubborn religiosity of the masses could not be eradicated, he finally decided to maintain authoritarian control over it. He heavily regulated churches and church leaders to keep them politically impotent.

“Under Khrushchev, then, the party realized that it was not enough to eliminate the political and economic base of religion. In order to transform the Soviet society of the present into the Communist society of the future, religion had to be eradicated not just from Soviet politics and public life but also from Soviet people’s consciousness.”[ii]

Khrushchev’s focus on party purity meant a return to campaigns to eradicate religious “survivals” and the promotion of a scientific materialist conception of the world as outlined by Marx-Leninism. The latter, in the form of secularist rituals, was supposed to fill the void left behind by a life without religion.

Soviet space flights were thought to show the world that the Soviet’s scientific, materialist, and atheistic worldview was superior to that of the religious and capitalist U.S. After all, wasn’t science the only path to knowledge, and matter the fundamental reality? And wasn’t it reason and not God who put a man into space? And a space-hero cosmonaut who didn’t see God in space, well . . .

Before a plenary session of the Central Committee, Russian Premiere Nikita Khrushchev gave all the Party and Komsomol organizations [Young Communists] the mission of promoting anti-religious propaganda. With that directive he said: “Why are you clinging to God? Here Gagarin flew into space and didn’t see God.”

Yuri Gagarin’s close friend and colleague, Colonel Valentin Petrov, denied that Gagarin ever said that. The words put in Gagarin’s mouth by Russian Premiere Nikita Khrushchev and Gagarin’s supposed godlessness became popular folklore and a party narrative created to support atheism. The party knew that people would have believed more in Gagarin’s words than in Khrushchev’s.

“There Is No God.” (Boga net!)

From out of the heavens, Yuri Gagarin, a baptized member of the Russian Orthodox Church, reentered into a world system that set itself up opposed to God. Gagarin was made a caricature of the atheistic propaganda the party wanted to propagate.

Khrushchev: “Why should you clutch at God” (you cannot see when you look out the capsule window into space when you can envision a materialist utopia in the successful figure of our own cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.)

~~~~~

A view through a window into heaven . . .

At the end of the first century CE, seven churches of Asia received a circular letter sent from the island of Patmos. The author composed the letter “in the spirit” on the Lord’s Day. The letter was to be read out loud in full on the Lord’s Day when Christians met for corporate worship. Their circumstances served as a type of inset in the letter’s cosmic space-time mapping.

The churches were situated in a Roman province in what is now western Turkey. Some twenty years before, the Roman Empire unleashed its full power against a Jewish rebellion resulting in the fall of Jerusalem and the complete destruction of the Second Temple.

Though Christian persecution had been sporadic, the oppressive nature of the Roman Empire made for distressful times for these early Christians. Devotion to and worship of only one Lord and God kept these Christians under suspicion by Roman authorities.

The surrounding Greco-Roman culture was polytheistic. The official state religion, headed by Jupiter, was the Roman pantheon of gods. Temples to Jupiter, Mars, and Venus were built throughout Rome. Being able to add your god or goddess to the local pantheon of gods worked to keep a diversity of religions in check for Pax Romana.

The Roman empire operated under ‘divine’ authority. The emperor, both a political and a deified religious figure, held absolute power. He maintained authority through political alliances, military might and a dutiful citizenry.

Public support for the imperial cult worked to solidify the emperor’s authority. Citizens were expected to show loyalty to the ‘divine’ emperor by participating in religious festivals, rituals, and emperor worship. Neglecting the imperial cult was considered treasonous. 

Throughout the empire Roman power and political influence were on display with monuments, mosaics, iconography, frescos, and image-stamped coins. Adding to perceptions of Rome as a formidable world power was literature, inscriptions, myths, architecture, and elaborate public ceremonials.

All eyes on the emperor.

Roman imperial propaganda was also used to shape the public’s perception of the emperor. His presence, like Rome’s, was to be sensed everywhere – in public places and in the sanctuaries of the imperial cult in provincial towns.

Emperors were depicted as tough warrior and general types and as benevolent paternalistic protector and statesman types. At the time of the Patmos letter Emperor Domitian governed (81 to 96 CE) as divine monarch and benevolent despot. As such, he saw himself as a cultural and moral authority able to guide every aspect of a citizen’s life.

The expectation for everyone under Roman rule was to respond to Rome in its terms and beyond that, to show devotion to the sovereign emperor. Or, feel the force of the empire. Fear was the motivation. “Bread and circus games” were the distractions used to deflect from the fact that Roman emperors were selfish and incompetent tyrants.

The Patmos letter was sent to those who held an expectation of God’s coming universal rule and to those who lost that focus. A clash between an all-powerful Sovereign and his kingdom and the ubiquitous domineering emperor and empire was expected. The letter, with vivid prophetic imagery, did not disappoint.

Every eye will see him.

Christians in the seven churches, upon hearing “Look! He is coming with the clouds, and every eye shall see him, yes, even those who pierced him. All the tribes of the earth shall mourn because of him. Yes! Amen,” looked out the window of their imagination to see Christ and the coming of God’s universal rule.

As the letter was read, they recognized the “satanic trinity” fighting against them and God’s kingdom on earth: “the dragon or serpent (the primeval, supernatural source of all opposition to God), the beast or sea-monster (the imperial power of Rome), and the second beast or earth-monster (the propaganda machine of the imperial cult).”[iii]

And they heard a devastating critique of Roman power dynamics. The letter recognized “the way a dominant culture, with its images and ideals, constructs the world for us, so that we perceive and respond to the world in its terms. Moreover, it unmasks this dominant construction of the world as an ideology of the powerful which serves to maintain their power.”[iv]

They also envisioned their role in saying “No” to the idolatries of Rome (Babylon) and to be a witness of the truth worth dying for to all tribes of the earth. And then the Day of the Lord.

After hearing the letter read, the church community once again reentered into a world system opposed to their Sovereign. But now they had something their imaginations could clutch – a view of God’s throne room and of “what must soon take place” – and a counter-cultural approach for the church.

More about John’s Apocalypse or The Revelation of John in the next post.


[i] Smolkin, Victoria. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism. Princeton University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1zgb089. PP 86-87

[ii] Ibid 61

[iii] Bauckham, Richard. (1993/2018). The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Cambridge University Press, 1993. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511819858. PP 89

[iii] Ibid 159

~~~~~

A counter-cultural approach for the church

In this parable of Jesus, recorded in the gospel of Mark (chap. 4), notice how the kingdom of God grows -not by power, might or militancy:

“This is what God’s kingdom is like. Once upon a time a man sowed seed on the ground. Every night he went to bed; every day he got up; and the seed sprouted and grew without him knowing how it did it. The ground produces crops by itself: first the stalk, then the ear, then the complete corn in the ear. But when the crop is ready, in goes the sickle at once, because harvest has arrived.”

~~~~~

Melanie Hempe, founder of Screen Strong, joins host Scot Bertram of Hillsdale College to discuss how to prevent your children from forming a lifelong screen addiction, simple tips for reducing screen time, and how to answer questions from other parents.

How to Combat Screen Addiction

How to Combat Screen Addiction – Hillsdale College Podcast Network

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Surface Readings

Now is the age of anxiety. ― W H Auden

“THE END IS NEAR.” Phenomena Pending.

Impending doom has been in the news during my entire lifetime. You can view some of the headlines and pronouncements here: Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions.

Before I came on the scene in the early 50s, the advent of nuclear weapons in the 40s posed the threat of nuclear war annihilation. Adding to American’s anxiety and panic during the Cold War period that followed was the new mass medium of 1950s television. Its B&W news, public service announcements, documentaries, and science fiction programming brought into homes the stark magnitude of the nuclear age.

One response during that anxious time was to use ‘Duck and Cover’ drills in schools across the United States. Students were trained as to what they should do in case of an atomic attack – dive under their desks and cover their heads (Producing another Atomic Kid!).

And though in the early 60s the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was discussed as a mutual deterrent, no one knew what would happen as in 1962 when the Cold War nearly escalated into nuclear war. The United States and the Soviet Union faced off during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The escalating arms race was at issue.

Released in 1965, Barry McGuire’s The Eve Of Destruction protest song addressed the instability in the world – the prospect of nuclear war, the Vietnam War, the middle east conflict and civil rights.

During the late 60s and early 70s, I was involved in the Chicago area Jesus People movement. I remember attending a Larry Norman concert where he sang, I Wish We’d All Been Ready. (Sadly, the song refers to a “Rapture” event, a popular escape plan for Christians based on a mis-reading of scripture.)

Life was filled with guns and war
And everyone got trampled on the floor
I wish we’d all been ready . . .

There’s no time to change your mind
The Son has come and you’ve been left behind . . .

A man and wife asleep in bed
She hears a noise and turns her head
He’s gone
I wish we’d all been ready . . .

Spectacularly wrong environmental and climate predictions were made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970. Some in 1971 predicted an Ice Age. Not one of the alarmist climate crisis predictions during my lifetime (or yours) have ever come to pass.

Nor did the wild claims of ‘The Adam and Eve Story’, written by a former US Air Force employee, UFO researcher and self-proclaimed psychic Chan Thomas in 1966. For the past 59 years the book has been kept under wraps by the CIA. The claims of the book are based around periodic cataclysmic events in history. The next one he proposed would be a sudden reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles, thereby wreaking havoc and total destruction to the planet in a matter of hours.

“You Never Want a Serious Crisis to Go to Waste.”

Along with the many end-of the world scenarios came Pop eschatology. The end-times prophecy business has been around during my entire lifetime. Not long ago I received a flyer announcing a weekend End-Times Prophecy seminar to be held at a local hotel.

In 1995 a series of books fictionalizing events surrounding a supposed rapture and seven-year tribulation period prior to the second coming of Christ began to appear on best-seller lists. The 16 Left Behind lowbrow thrillers of the Left Behind series, authored by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, arrived on the scene twenty-five years after another end-times book.

When Hal Lindsey and C. C. Carlson came out with The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970 it sold millions of copies. Their ‘non-fiction’ end-times book was later adapted (1979) into a documentary film narrated by Orson Welles. 

Some readers might recall that Orson Well’s, on October 30, 1938, gave a dramatic War of the Worlds radio broadcast. It scared the heck out of a lot of people. Some say Lindsey’s book did the same.

The Pop eschatology of LGPE, applied to current events such as the Cold War, was released shortly after the Israel’s Six-Day War. The authors aligned their dispensational theology with contemporary geopolitical events to show that civilization was headed for doomsday. They pushed hardcore Zionism.

 Men Who Stare at Charts

The Left Behind series, The Late Great Planet Earth, and much of today’s “prophecy”, are steeped in John Nelson Darby’s dispensational theology and “rapture” nonsense. Darby (1800-1882) was an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher, clergyman, and founder of the Plymouth Brethren and the Exclusive Brethren. Among other things, he thought that Christians should not be involved in politics (as if Jesus ascended to the Father only to leave us here to ponder salvation in different epochs, to develop dispensational theology charts to schedule God’s acts, and to console ourselves with millennial dreams.)

In my estimation, dispensational theology, which didn’t exist in the church history until Darby came along and the Scofield Bible expanded its reach, is a way of charting Scripture into manageable chunks of salvation history and a way of managing God and expectations. This theology proposed to show how God planned for people’s salvation in each historical period by what relates to Israel, what relates to the church, and what the End Times will look like. It was a way to get a handle on dates and times and God.

Dispensational theology and its offshoot Pop eschatology seem to be a science project applied to theology. Darby, the originator of a pre-trib rapture, lived during the 1800s, a period following the Enlightenment when knowledge by way of rationalism and of empiricism was emphasized.

I don’t know that anyone cares about dispensational theology except for a few wonky theologians. If you do, then see The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation and What Is Dispensationalism and Who Believes It?

Pop eschatology looks at the geopolitical landscape, cherry picks what is literal and symbolic, and crams headline news into end-time predictions. But “de-coding” symbolic scripture prophecies to give a detailed scenario of end-time events is not Christian eschatology. It’s trying to time the market for the I wish we’d all been ready crowd to jump in. It’s manipulation of scripture and of people to produce a turn to God out of FOMO.

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Added 6-23-2025, in light of the Israel/US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities:

I have a great deal of sympathy for Christians who still believe the lore that dispensationalism offers. I understand what motivates them and why. But, it is well past time for the church to provide better Bible teaching that does not encourage American Christians to develop misplaced loyalties. American Christians have duties to their nation and their church. But for too many American Christians, misplaced theological convictions have led to political loyalties that prioritize Israel over both the church and their own nation.

https://www.jchasedavis.com/p/rumors-of-war

Questions Abound

This post is not meant to be a reproach to making sense and order of what is happening around us. That’s what we do, especially in a time and under those who “forsake the law and praise the wicked” (Prov. 28:4):

Why did Joe Biden award the wicked Hillary Clinton and George Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

And why did Biden pardon the treasonous General Mark Milley and the murderous Anthony Fauci? Why did Joe Biden preemptively pardon them and the illegal Jan. 6 committee? (I don’t believe these Federal pardons are legal. In any case, states can bring charges against them.)

Why did Joe Biden commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death rowa list that includes at least five child killers and several mass murderers? Biden gave the reprieve to some of the nation’s most violent murderers — nine of them found too dangerous to live after butchering fellow inmates — as part of his effort at “ensuring a fair and effective justice system.”

Why did Joe Biden preemptively pardon capitol police officer Michael Byrd, the one who murdered unarmed US Air Force veteran Ashli Babbit on J6?

Why haven’t the “Spies Who Lie” – 51  intelligence agents – who signed a letter in 2020 saying emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop carried “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation in an effort to interfere with the election been brought to justice? (Trump just yanked their security clearances.)

How does one justify Biden protecting Ukraine’s border with billions and billions of US taxpayer dollars and weapons as being more important than protecting our own overrun borders and our exposed citizens? And how does one justify Biden and Ukraine escalating the war with Russia to a point that’s dangerously close to nuclear war?

And what about those (Globalists, WEF, WHO) who appear to use dystopian novels as their guidebook to immanentize the eschaton with their version of sense and order – a New World Order – under the guise of saving the planet (from the people living here)?

And, going forward, why turn over our future to godless pagan Globalists and their anti-human tokenization of life?  Why let them concentrate power in human-replacing AI?

(Thank God. Trump just signed executive orders to get the U.S. out of the WHO and out of the Paris Climate Accord. He also signed an EO barring central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). CBDCs could facilitate a social credit scoring system that controlled a person’s behavior and assets.

Trump also signed EOs to secure the border with a National Emergency and EOs that work to eliminate “government censorship of free speech” and the “weaponization of government” against “political adversaries of the previous administration.” Thank God Christians were involved in politics this last election!

Seeing evil expand its reach over the last four years of the illegitimate Biden regime and finding out that there were Christians who supported four more years of it just to say “No” to Trump, had me horrified at where this world is headed. With Trump as president now we have some buffer against the evil that works to overcome us. The fight against dark forces is not over.)

Alarm bells should go off when you hear dogmatic pronouncements such as “Trump will destroy democracy” and “humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency.” These preposterous statements are meant to manipulate. We must be careful as to what and who we put our trust in.

When things converge and become dark, ugly and threatening, imaginations take on visions of the end times. And unless you are a nihilist and believe in Nothing except power, you desire a time when things will be put right. Most of us want justice to prevail in the end and to see all of our best hopes realized.

Despite literal, surface-level interpretations of conditions here on earth leading to end-of the world predictions, false prophecies, doomsday scenarios, worries about near-Earth asteroids, hyperbolic threats of “mass extinction” due to a “climate crisis”, and a “global crisis of unprecedented reach and proportion” (Fauci’s gain-of-function pandemic) The End has not happened during my 70+ years. Why?

“THE END IS IN PROCESS.”

The delay of The End, the delay in Christ’s Parousia or Second Coming, is God’s patience and grace giving people time hear the truth and to repent. How do they hear the truth? Those who have entered God’s kingdom as a result of his first appearance have a role in bearing witness to the nations to bring about God’s universal kingdom before his Second Coming.

Before “God through Christ Jesus judges the secret thoughts of all” (Paul in Rom. 2:16), all nations are to hear the gospel message. God’s desire is that all people hear the truth about His Son and turn to him and away from the worship of false gods and false power. This is what John of Patmos communicates to seven struggling churches in a Roman province in Asia with his apocalyptic prophecy Revelation.

John of Patmos writes to the seven churches, each in their own context, about their witness within the context of the worldwide tyranny of Rome and the broader context of God’s cosmic battle against evil and his purpose for his creation and kingdom.

John makes it clear that witness of the truth proceeds based on the church’s loyalty to God’s kingdom and the church knowing the truth worth dying for and on the church being a faithful witness of that truth even unto death. The truth:  Jesus Christ, the Lamb Who was slain, is One with God and worthy of all worship and praise.

Revelation was written within the setting of the Roman empire. Early Christians were struggling against the “satanic trinity: the dragon or serpent (the primeval, supernatural source of all opposition to God), the beast or sea-monster (the imperial power of Rome), and the second beast or earth-monster (the propaganda machine of the imperial cult).”[i] The worship and witness of only the One True God and not of the Roman emperor put these early Christians in serious opposition to this “satanic trinity.”

Regarding a surface reading of events and of scripture (sometimes called “the plain meaning of the text”), consider the reverse engineering applied to the Genesis creation account to create a ‘Biblical origins’ response to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and later, for the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Based on research that includes astrophysics, geology, and the James Webb Space Telescope, the universe is estimated to be 13.8 -26.7 billion years old. But reverse engineering of earth’s age using a literal surface reading interpretation of the creation account in Genesis estimates the earth to be about 6-10,000 years old. In terms of Jewish and Chrisitan thinking over millennia, the young earth creationism (YEC) position came about recently.

The YEC position has tied itself to concerns of Biblical inerrancy as if only a plain reading of the text, the lowest level of understanding, is what makes the Bible the Word of God. The fact that the Bible was written for us but not to us, the YEC position doesn’t allow for a historically contextual understanding to be taken into account.

Consider that the same reverse engineering used for the creation account (recently, the attempt to conform physical evidence into a Young-Earth biblical framework) has often been applied to End Time accounts in scripture to conform events to dispensational theology.

The prophecy and theology of Revelation relates not literal dates and geopolitical events but cosmic eventualities and resolutions. Its message for those in Christ is to persevere while living with evil opposition all around and with the tension of the imminence and delay of Christ’s return.

John encourages the churches: the enemies of God are finally defeated to make way for the ushering in of God’s fully realized everlasting kingdom. Heaven and earth will be joined together.

The delay of The End is a concern in heaven. John writes (Rev. 6): When [the Lamb] broke the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; they cried out with a loud voice, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” 

John’s apocalyptic vision, filled with symbols and with descriptions of mythical characters evoking the book of Daniel, summons our imaginations to visualize things as heaven sees them. John’s prophecy, like the hundreds of OT prophecies he alludes to, is to reveal God’s POV.

 Revelation, you see, is what history has been all about. With that understanding, we carry on “knowing what soon must take place” (Rev. 1:1).

More about Revelation in my next post.


[i] Bauckham, R. (1993/2018). The theology of the Book of Revelation. PP 88-89

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The Tribulation and the Rapture – Dr. Walter Martin (Historic Premillennial)

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“Can you give me a hand moving these?”

Daily Cartoon: Monday, May 13th | The New Yorker

Reports from Davos before President Trump speaks:

Personhood For Rivers And Trees: Larry Taunton On The Fundamentally Anti-Human Sentiment Of WEF

Noor Bin Ladin Reporting From WEF: The Golden Age Is Incompatible With AI Replacement