In the Shadow of a Turning

Thus says the Lord God, Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing! ... They have seen false visions and lying divinations. They say, ‘Declares the Lord,’ when the Lord has not sent them, and yet they expect him to fulfill their word.  -- Ezekiel 13:3,6

Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, You must not do that!  I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus.  Worship God.  For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. -- Revelation 19:10

I am troubled these days by the lack of truth in so much of what is said and done.  Nothing is as it seems, and people, sadly, seem to prefer pretty lies prettily lied to the genuine and authentic.  Prophecy, as we noted recently, is, at its solid heart, a revelation of the way things are rather than what we might like them to be.  Bob has said that true thoughts are prayers.  Telling the truth may not make one a prophet, but the spirit of truth is the spirit of prophecy. 

In a world where we are inundated with fiction and fictitious imagery, deceit and deception, it can be difficult to find verity.  Movies make our most fantastic imaginings appear as convincing and certain as a flint rock.  Manipulated models substantiate the maker's beliefs.  We convince ourselves that if we can just ignore a few inputs, plaster over a few weak points in the wall, that our new and improved version of Babylon will withstand all assaults by solemn light. 

Should we find it reassuring that our situation is nothing new?  In a way, I am heartened to know that humanity has survived this game of blind man's bluff countless times, but I am also disappointed that we have learned so little from history.  We are invariably fooled by what we think is the superiority of our age.  The plan only failed before because the operators didn't have our technology, our science, our grasp of the cosmos and its laws.  Like the visionaries of Ezekiel's day, our false prophets will be shocked when their proclamations go unfulfilled.  They have spoken in the name of their gods.  They have heard the voices of their deities.  The science is settled.  The program is a success.  The law was passed. 

The problem is all the people like Ezekiel and Jeremiah, all the deniers, the capitalists, the extremists, the bitter clingers, religious fanatics, the old white men who refuse to surrender their racial and gender privileges.  It's the Jews, the Catholics, the fundamentalists.  There's always somebody that won't go along with the system, that won't bow to the image.  And so it goes. 

God is in control, and He has, by His wisdom and sovereign will, brought me to this place and this time with this mind.  Perhaps I will be a silent watcher or a weeping martyr or a happy warrior.  The truth is patient, as patient as mountain, sea, and sky, powerful as the trembling stars, and as fearless as the light that awaits the face of the globe turning from its own shadow.

The Glory Road

I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge.
And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshipped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands.
They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. -- Revelation 20:4

If America falls darkness will cover the earth for a thousand years. -- Tagline of an unknown Free Republic poster

I’m not sure what the person has in mind by the phrase “if America falls”. Perhaps it is that the Old World is falling already, falling to apathy, to bureaucratic tyranny, falling to economic stupidity, to nihilism, to Islam. The shadow of self-indulgence falls deep and very dark across the homeland of western civilization, and it dims the light even in America.

A new Dark Age is imminent, but I don’t think that’s necessarily bad news, and I don’t think it will happen tomorrow. As the daily cycles of a human life must follow one another, so the millennial cycles of civilizations must come one after the other, from vision to blindness, from glory to corruption, from prosperity to collapse. That is easy enough to see. What is probably unknowable until it happens is whether we go down in steps, in stages, or whether we go off a precipice.

We are on a downward trend at the moment, but, as an individual or a civilization, we almost always must go down in order to go up. Like the sea, life comes in waves – peaks precede troughs which precede peaks. The valley of the shadow of death seems to be a place where we lose growth and lose ground, but it is only preparing us for the next ascent. The pruning produces more fruit. He who will not enter into the little death will never know the greater life.

Any civilization, in the long run, is only temporary. Only the kingdom of God endures. Nations all pass away in time. The most insignificant and unknown souls who have ever existed exist forever – world without end.

I pray that America will not fall for many generations; I pray this nation may long endure. For if she should fall, there will be darkness and chaos and blood and death. Yet it will not be the end, only another wave, only another valley to cross that man might climb a higher peak and draw closer to the King and the Kingdom, to that reign of Christ when all shall be peace.

A little before the verse I quoted above, you will find in this book of the Apocalypse, another saying that is one of my favorites. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophesy (Revelation 19:10). While we are not all prophets, we all have what you might call a prophetic duty. We are every one called to pass on those things which are important, which are eternal. If we are as a culture approaching a valley, our duty to pass on the essential is more vital than it would be in more benevolent times.

Every life is a story. I have heard that only twenty percent of people will reach the end of their story, look back, and see that they have reached the end that God wrote for them when they entered the world. I don’t know how anyone arrived at that percentage or if it is anywhere near correct. I do know I don’t want my last breath to be a sigh of regret.

My own story is very common and undistinguished. The magnitude of my destiny matters not at all, only my willingness to be true to it.

Strange as it seems, part of the plot that I must live out is a calling to tell my small narratives, my little travelogues -- like filling in a small white spot on a map. It doesn't seem to amount to much, but who am I to say? Besides it's in my blood. My father loved telling stories, and I can't help myself. Then all my friends are storytellers. Some tell stories with words -- some with pictures -- some with paint. And that’s just to name a few.

I listen. I hear a Voice behind such soul chronicles say, Walk this way. And I add my hobbling legends, occasional marks on a map -- old when it came to me. If by grace I may pass it on for another to see a path through the shadowed valleys and crossed ways to the mountain of his destiny: Pisgah, Tabor, Moriah, or Olivet.