The Reliance-Vengeance Trap

How nations walk themselves into Judgment

Alliance→Reliance→Defiance→Vengeance→Compliance! or Extinction!

 

My spirit cringes when I hear national leaders, including my own, boast about their economies, their militaries, and especially their alliances. That kind of boasting consistently reveals a dangerous ignorance of history, and of Heaven. Scripture and history testify to a pattern that has repeated across centuries, cultures, and empires. Nations are allowed to rise, prosper, arm themselves, and form alliances, but never for the reasons they assume.

All power and blessing originate with, and devolve from Jesus, The Lord God. He permits nations to acquire strength only insofar as it serves Heaven’s strategic purposes, which include:

1. Testing and exposing the true contents of a nation’s heart—whether righteous or wicked.
2. Using nations as instruments of judgment against others whose allotted season of Grace has expired without repentance.
3. Granting temporary rewards for prior actions that aligned with His purposes.
4. Judging those very instruments of judgment once their Grace allotment expires without repentance.
5. Making His judgments public, so an observing remnant may see, fear, and learn from them.
6. Humbling human pride, the taproot of every sin.
7. Revealing there is an unseen God in Heaven, actively engaged in the affairs of mankind.

Ancient Israel and Judah are the most familiar templates of this pattern, but they are not exceptions. Over centuries, both nations repeatedly failed to perceive these lessons. Their misplaced reliance on kings, armies, wealth, and alliances resulted in iterative judgments, national collapse, and finally, global scattering that largely continues today.

 

The Old Testament repeatedly testifies how same pattern was applied to Gentile nations, particularly hegemonic powers. In fact, I intuit, to varying degrees, every nation has walked this path. Just like today.

• They trusted in their economic strength.
• They boasted in their military might.
• Weaker nations leaned heavily on alliances.
• And without exception, they ALL suffered the same end—the cumulative weight of Heaven’s judgments. 

The trap is subtle, but consistent:

 

   1. Alliance – Cooperation begins, often for legitimate reasons.

   2. Reliance – Trust quietly shifts from God, to strength, systems, and/or partners.

   3. Defiance – Power emboldens rejection of righteousness—human nature@work!

   4. Vengeance – When their Grace allotment expires, Heaven responds decisively!

5. Compliance or Extinction – Humbling leads to survival. Pride leads to extinction!

 

This is not ancient history. It is a living pattern. If we take these lessons seriously, we won't be shocked when Heaven, once again in our lifetime, reaches the vengeance stage of its proven model for testing, judging, and publicly shaming peoples and nations, especially their leaders! (...if only they knew!)

 

Examples in Scripture are for our benefit. They don’t whisper, but SHOUT Heaven’s warning to us today:

• The LORD has given a command concerning you: ‘Your name shall be perpetuated no longer.’ (Nahum 1:14)
• Thus Babylon shall sink and not rise. (Jeremiah 51:64) 

History affirms this pattern always ends in one of two ways:

 

The compliant and humbled are allowed to continue.

The defiant and stout-hearted discontinue.