The God who moves kings and kingdoms has not stopped doing so.
We are seeing nations shift, peace treaties established, and alliances develop at an extraordinary pace. There seems to be rapidly multiplying peace in our Middle Eastern neighborhood, as well as calls for a revived Ottoman Caliphate. However every move, every alliance, every leader was known by God from before the world began. Moreover, events are moving consistently in line with Scripture.
Although much of Christianity has whittled the faith down to individual sin, salvation, and a personal relationship with God, the truth is that the God who moves kings and kingdoms has not taken His hands off the wheel.
Seeing the macro picture
God is at work both on the micro scale of our individual lives, and on the macro scale of world events. Whether it’s elections or Coronavirus, abortion laws or peace treaties, we need to make sure that we are not so myopic as to see our faith as purely about us. God’s greater story is being being played out on a global scale.
With a Bible in hand and and eye on current affairs, we can be watching and praying as God moves among the nations. We are seeing this great story of redemption played out live in full technicolor. God is steadily steering the world towards its destiny, which has been written down for us in Scripture, in black and white.
It’s a remarkable thing to think that we have a guide to future events right there on our bookshelf.
God has consistently moved through kings and rulers, tribes and nations, disastrous exiles and amazing miracles. Was it a coincidence that just as the huge Jewish population of Spain were being expelled that Columbus sailed the ocean blue, opening the door to a new safe haven? Or that the Romans just happened to have laid fantastic infrastructure throughout their huge empire in time for the Apostles to go on the road with the gospel? Is it unrelated that, despite plans for a Jewish state being long established and waves of Jewish immigrants already arriving, the reestablishment of Israel took place right after the Holocaust? It’s hard to say that these remarkable coincidences were due to God’s handiwork with absolute certainty, but the Bible shows how God can and will orchestrate world events to carry out His greater purposes.
Glorious goals
So often when we think of “end times” we think of very dark and frightening horrors to come, but if we follow the example of Jesus in fixing our eyes beyond that, to our glorious destination, we remember that the end of the story is spectacular.
But at the end of days the mountain of Adonai’s House will be established as chief of the mountains, and will be raised above the hills.
Peoples will flow up to it. Then many nations will go and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of Adonai, to the House of the God of Jacob!
Then He will direct us in His ways, and we will walk in His paths.”
For Torah will go forth from Zion, and the word of Adonai from Jerusalem.
He will judge between many peoples and decide for mighty nations far off. They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning shears. Nation will not lift up sword against nation nor will they learn war again.
(Micah 4:2-3)
Picture by Mat Reding on Unsplash
