The Lord promised tests and trials for His saints, to drive us to repentance and revival. He promised judgments to shake and spiritually-awaken the un-saved. But on both sides, we are increasingly witnessing the opposite effects! His tests and trials have driven countless erstwhile saints to abandon their faith entirely. And his judgments have been fully explained away with the sciences, leaving in their wake, no moves toward righteousness among the unsaved!! Many once-devout believers have drifted into spiritual darkness, compromise, complacency, and even apostasy!!! With far less ‘spiritual saltiness and light’, sinfulness across the Earth is abounding. Moreover, exploding technological progress gives us steadily-increasing ways and means by which we can multiply the spread and impacts of our sins. Friends, we are undoubtedly navigating the ‘upside-down/inside-out’, last days of this 3rd age of history, just as Jesus and Paul both predicted.
Through Paul, The Lord said His Grace is intended to lead us to repentance and a turn toward righteousness. (Romans 2:4) But when Grace fails, He promised judgments, specifically famines, wild beast attacks, warfare and pestilence. (Ezekiel 14:12-23) Each judgment can trigger derivative impacts. Acting together, they would produce cascading, overwhelming impacts. Note how pestilence is rather unique from the others. Pestilence spreads invisibly, lingers beyond the initial strike, and mutates unpredictably, making it a self-perpetuating judgment that can escalate on its own, unlike famine, wild beasts attacks and warfare. As such, GLOBAL pestilence might potentially be the apex of The Lord’s judgments upon our un-hearing, un-responsive world. In this light, could the Covid-19 pandemic have been a global shaking, meant to realign hearts of saints and sinners alike across the world? Though many believers did 'wake-up, spiritually', it seems to have exposed the fragility of western Christianity -- the church, comfortable, wealthy, spiritually powerless, shallow faith that was easily discarded by many. The result? Millions of previous Christians, now wear a different label: Nones. No faith. No belief. No conviction. *
The Lord is watching. His heart is grieved. Can you hear His warning to the Laodicean church, echoing across the landscape of our post-pandemic lives today??
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* See: In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace, and also The Great De-churching. See also: 2 Thessalonians 2:3 and Revelation 3:16.
