The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, speak to your people and say to them, If I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them, and make him their watchman, and if he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people, then if anyone who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet and did not take warning; his blood shall be upon himself. But if he had taken warning, he would have saved his life. But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand. “So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.
Ezekiel 33:1-9
We just finished Acts 10 in our Bible study where God flips Peter’s paradigm upside down again. I say again because Peter thought he knew what Jesus meant when He told the disciples to buy a sword in Luke 22:36-38 only to be rebuked for using it in Luke 22:50-51.
“No more of this!” And he touched his ear and healed him.
Luke 22:51
“No more of this!” was a mark in time. It was the official enactment of the Sermon on the Mount. No longer would God’s ambassadors conquer territory by the sword.
Acts 10 begins with Peter having gone to stay in the home of Simon the Tanner. Tanners were ceremonially unclean. Hence, Peter was in violation of Jewish law by having contact with him let alone sleeping in his house.
Next, God speaks through Cornelius, a believer in God but not a disciple yet, or a Jew. This is followed by Peter’s vision and God’s command to “Kill and eat” non-kosher food. This was another mark in time and formal enactment of Jesus’s words in Mathew 15.
Mathew 15:11
“…it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”
Realize it or not, Jesus repeatedly brings us back to the original problem, namely the “knowledge of good and evil” from Genesis 3. Most people limit their understanding to the act of disobedience when Adam and Eve ate the fruit. The greater depth of their sin was that man became a god unto himself.
Paul quoted Isaiah that “no one is righteous“. Our very best, most altruistic ideas and judgments are like filthy rags. Isaiah 64 and Romans 3. Jesus flipped this paradigm when He only said and did what he heard and saw His Father do. John 5:19-20. Jesus was God incarnate on earth and yet even He did not lean on His own understanding…Proverbs 3:5-8.
I believe another mark in time is upon us.
A family member of mine has deconstructed from Christianity mainly due to spiritual abuse and extreme hypocrisy that all too often characterizes the contemporary Laodicean body of Christ. His worldview has since swung hard left. I have traditionally been just right of the middle. We often message back and forth on TikTok.
I mention this because my TikTok algorithm has changed. Instead of my being exclusively fed right-leaning content, I have been seeing almost exactly fifty percent right and fifty percent left-leaning media. In nature, there are compelling moral arguments on both sides for almost every socioeconomic or political issue. After all, we all want better, more affordable food, healthcare, and energy. No one I know wants to drink contaminated water or breathe polluted air.
One thing I have observed is that if you are on the right, you undoubtedly see the very worst representations of the left. We’ve all seen Black Block Antifa types throwing bricks through windows, starting fires, and attacking reporters. When questioned they have nothing but explicatives to share. Meanwhile, those on the left see overt white supremacists, e.g., Patriot Front members, Nick Fuentes, and KKK nut jobs. The right hears about Tim Walz drinking horse semen and partnering with Somali “Learing” Centers to rob the American taxpayers. The left hears that Donald Trump is a misogynistic Nazi pedophile and friend of Jeffrey Epstein. One thing is certain. Some, all, or none of this could be true. At the end of the day, none of us knows anything beyond what we are told by the media. Video footage might be AI. Still, we apply the logical fallacy known as “Appeal to Authority” and form a conclusion regarding the state of our nation and the world. We commiserate with like-minded peers in our respective echo chambers and discuss what should be done about and to the other side.
“Commiserate” means to falsely estimate.
Now Renee Nichole Good has been shot dead by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minnesota is best known for the death of George Floyd. According to the left, he was killed by the knee of Derek Chauvin. The right claims he died of a methamphetamine and fentanyl overdose.
Right-wing media reported that Ms. Good had a rap sheet filled with protest-related charges. ICE was trying to apprehend her when she attempted to flee and purposefully ran into the ICE agent who then shot her dead. Given that she was the mother of a six-year-old child, JD Vance among others, wondered about her priorities. Why was she interfering with a law enforcement operation? After all illegal immigration is a crime.
Those on the left say ICE is the strong arm of the white supremacist Gestapo. They are now out to get white women, not just people of color. Ms. Good was just passing through when she got caught in the demonstration. No law enforcement officer should ever jump in front of a moving vehicle to block it.
Those on the right point out that Ms. Good was a lesbian who divorced her husband. The offending ICE agent is a Christian and married to an immigrant. False equivalencies abound ad infinitum.
The left is appalled that armed masked men have descended on their communities and are questioning everyone in a Nazi-style “papers please!” format. One mental health professional asked, “Where are the de-escalation skills?” “Just obey the law and comply!” Cries the right. “The feds are breaking the law!” the left replies.
“Nichole Good was just afraid!” says the left. “The ICE officer had been dragged by a vehicle in a previous incident. He feared for his life!” Says the right. “Nazis!” Cries the left. “Communists!” Cries the right. The right demands that Trump implement the Insurrection Act. The left declares its time to blow up police stations and begin an insurrection. Both sides claim it will be bad for the other.
I just listened to a left-leaning Marine Veteran of Fallujah explain that insurrection is upon us and a lot of people are going to die. Like gasoline on smoldering coals, each event creates more violent rhetoric. “Trump wants civil war so he can cancel the mid-term elections!” Says the left. “The Democrats want insurrection to distract from their fraud!” Says the right. Once again, some, none, or all of that could be true. Meanwhile as many as six thousand protesters have been killed in the current Iranian insurrection.
Is that what people want?
In my opinion it’s one big satanic psyop. You know a Psyop by F.A.T.E. Focus, Authority, Tribe, and Emotion.
An event happens that jerks the collective focus onto it. Authority, namely politicians and the media, defines and declares what happened or is happening. People commiserate within their respective tribal groups, e g Right or Left. Emotion is generated and sustained by rehtoric and a consensus is formed. Each subsequent event results in a positive feedback loop until both sides become increasingly escalated and begin killing each other. And the devil smiles. He smiles because he knows that he can do nothing to us. He can only convince us to do it to ourselves. This is world history in a nutshell.
I could be wrong, but as I see it all signs point to our being close to the end. If that is the case then we know that a third of mankind will be killed in the process. Rev 9:14-18
If anyone is to be taken captive,
Revelation 13:10
to captivity he goes;
if anyone is to be slain with the sword,
with the sword must he be slain. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.
Hence the current mark in time and enactment of Jesus’s words.
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
Mathew 7:13-14
Narrow is thlíbō
– Strongs Concordance 2346-
to suffer tribulation, trouble, press (as in crushing grapes to make wine).
The time has come for all believers to walk the narrow way. The narrow way is marked by two ditches, one on the left and the other on the right. Genuine believers will not be duped into falling into either one because neither is correct let alone good. No one is good. There are no political or economic solutions to a spiritual problem. We will be pressed and despised by those in both ditches.
Jesus warned about the leaven of Herod, the Pharisees, and Sadducees in Mathew 16 and Mark 8. That leaven is of the world and the religious/political spirit. It is the knowledge of good and evil. It is this leaven that confused Peter, such that he denied Jesus three times when he swore he would give his life. It was this leaven that drove him to attack Malchus in Gethsemane and later argue with God three times over what he could eat in Acts 10. It is the leaven that will drive brother to deliver up brother and the love of many to grow cold. This leaven is the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is self-righteous and rebellious. Therefore, be sober, be watchful. 1 Peter 5:8 Prepare to endure in love as lawlessness grows. Mathew 24:12-13
“No more of this!” means exactly that, His Kingdom is not of this world. John 18:36 We are in the world not of it. John 17:16
Sweep the leaven from your soul.
Preach the Gospel
