upside down
There have been other times in history when mankind has likely felt that things were going from bad to worse. The Black Plague, which killed almost 200 million people came on at the end of a famine. Things were bad then. Within one hundred years the Ott@mans had storm the Balkans and Europe spent the next five hundred years trying to escape the clutches of slavery. At least one million souls were sold to North Africa as slaves; countless millions more were sucked into the whirlwind of the Ott@man machine which used and spat them out relentlessly in what had once been Constantinople. Boys were used as frontline war fodder, girls as h@rem sex slaves. Africa fared no better, of course, as the Ar@b slave traders took advantage of tribal disputes and paid well for Africans to enslave and sell each other. That was a dark season of earth’s history indeed.
But we live now. And right now we look around and see militant Isl@m gaining the upper hand across Asia, partnering with the strange bedfellows of R@ssia and @hina. Gone are the days when Am@rica was strong enough to stand up to these evils, eaten away by corruption in leadership, for which her people are paying and will pay dearly, unless God intervenes. Europe is crusted over with a kowtowing to Ar@b leadership in Lond@nistan and T@rkish arm bending with the Grey Wolves. T@rkey’s leaders have openly declared they are building a global Isl@mic army to wipe Isr@el off the map. For those who are once again at the frontline of human slavery at the hands of terrorists following the same dictates as the Ott@mans did, it doesn’t look good. Slavery and slaughter, wars and rumors of wars all hung on a darkened background of plagues and storms of locusts. Not good at all.
Historically, however, we see that some of the strongest victories of the Cross of Christ happened in dark eras. Even when Believers were martyred, or when the plague swept the Roman Empire in the era of the Early Church. At that time roughly 30% of the Roman world died. In comparison, 0.6% to 0.1% of today’s population is recorded as dying of Covid19. Famed doctor Galen fled from serving the sick and hid in his personal home. But Christians were anchored. They knew who they were in Christ. They knew Christ in them the Hope of Glory. They had the mind of Christ; power, love and a sound mind. They believed Jesus when He said, “greater things will you do,” they knew themselves to be dead to self and alive in Christ and they had the deeply embedded principle to love their neighbors engraved on their hearts. And so it was Christians who cared for the sick.
Bishop Eusebius recorded during this plague, “All day long some of [the Christians] tended to the dying and their burial. Others gathered a multitude of those withered from famine and distributed bread to them.” There were no air-conditioned wards, face masks, or painkillers. Bishop Dionysius reported how pagans threw their sick families out on the streets, in fear of death, while Christians cared for them in Christ’s love, and often died instead of them, having caught the disease while ministering.
Today there are Believes who are choosing to stand their ground and stay, when they could leave hotbeds of martyrdom. They face regular, daily threats to their lives. They love not their lives unto death, while still living daily in the tensions this causes.
Our reality is, that once we have Christ in us, the Hope of Glory our entire perspective changes. What the world chases, we have no attachment to. Sure, we appreciate - and give thanks for food, shelter, strength, peace - but we do not pursue these for ourselves as such. We pursue the Lord and if these are forthcoming, we give thanks. If instead we are plunged into suffering, we pray, and often miracles happen. Then we have more reason to give thanks. If our suffering is prolonged, we know we can trust God, because He only does what is good, and only allows us to walk in darkness for as long as it will be a strengthening to our faith muscle, build a stronger foundation in our lives, win us eternal fruit, and bless others.
In our upside down Kingdom of God, darkness can’t really touch us. We get discouraged, hurt, angry, fed up, wounded, but we know we can turn to God and receive the mind of Christ and overcome, and get back up, and go on. Great evils and brute force may reign on earth, but we know their days are numbered. We live above that, with arms that are being strengthened to bend a bow of bronze and serve beyond our natural human strength.
In our worldview, love is our empowerment. And God is that Love. And nothing God gives us is ever lost. It looks lost in the earth’s eyes, but the upside down kingdom grows best in places like Iran and Afghanistan, where the world’s fastest growing churches are. Join them in your prayers, your walk of faith, and your priorities.