1726. WAR: WAR on people. An email I received

Let me begin by quoting Naomi Wolf: “2020 was the story. It launched a narrative and the narrative is you can restrain billions of people, lock them in their homes, inject them against their will, mask them against their will, destroy their economies, suppress all their human rights. But if the narrative said COVID, that was the plausible deniability that you weren't actually just a flat-out fascistic tyrant. So that was just a preamble. And so now Shanghai is the next step.” According to CNN and NBC and Newsweek – i.e. the mainstream media – China is implementing a “COVID zero” policy that is being used to lockdown the city of Shanghai and its 26 million residents. And this ain’t just any ordinary lockdown, this is the brutal type. It’s the type in which children are forcibly separated from parents. It’s the type in which dogs are beaten to death with shovels in the hands of public health officials. It’s the type in which human beings made in the image of God are locked in their apartment buildings without food. It’s the type in which the State – made in the image of Satan - has the power – and desire - to crush the ordinary person. It’s the type in which drones fly overhead and eerily admonish the hungry persons on the street to “control your desire for freedom.” Consider this quote: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” 2020 mattered. Shanghai matters. When an autocratic state grinds millions of its own citizens in a purge-like mill, it matters. These are topics of which we must not be silent. The brutality on display in Shanghai and the consequent risk of such brutality being embraced by our own auto-centric elites ought to be the topic leading every news cast. It ought to be the center of conversation around every water cooler and dinner table. From the pulpit of every church and the lips of every Christian ought rise words of condemnation against such injustice. If we love our God, we will hate the evil He hates. If we love our fellowman, we will oppose the modern high-tech tyranny – unparalleled in history - that comes for the vulnerable, the uncooperative, and the ones who dare dissent. 2020 horrified me because I sensed, as Naomi Wolf so eloquently expresses, that it was preamble. I saw the power of the State. I heard the Orwellian words. I observed the fear and swift compliance of the people, and I knew that such a combination would result in the evil re-building of the Tower of Babel… that evil would be allowed to advance. And so it has. People I love have accused me of despising my fellow man because I resisted masks and lockdowns and opposed vaccine mandates. I have been rejected by some simply because I have questioned the narrative. My reasonable questions have been rebuffed by name-calling and straw-man arguments. Real conversations of depth have been denied. I have been cancelled. I have been labeled. I have been mocked. I have been publicly shamed….and yet I knew then and I know now: I resist because I love. Yes, I love liberty. Yes, I love the ideals of the land of the free and the home of the brave. But, it is more than that. I love the Creator Redeemer God who saved my soul. I love my neighbor – my fellow human being journeying through the life God has bestowed upon him. I love truth. I believe reality and humanity and beauty are precious and profound and are to be defended. And thus I must stand. I must speak. As preamble pushes into the next chapter, I must not be silent about the things that matter. Christians speak often of “anti-Christ” as a man someday to arise. But could it be that anti-Christ is not just a man, but a system? A global system of elites intent on raising a new Tower of Babel in mockery of the True and Living God? A system that not only despises the Creator Redeemer God, but despises His image bearers as well? The Church is a global entity that must speak and rise to this historic moment, resisting evil wherever evil be found. "And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast. These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for He is Lord of lords and King of kings: and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful."