How’s the world doing?
8 and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. (Revelation 20:8a–ESV)
For the moment skip across the bit about deceit, battles, Gog and Magog. Pick up your binoculars and look beyond and around them to see how the world is doing.
Where are people? They are everywhere.
Whose number is like the sand of the sea? The nations.
When Jesus reigns the world people will be here, there and everywhere. That is what is meant by the “four corners of the earth.” Too numerous to count are the people on the earth. That is deduced from the “sand of the sea.”
So, during the earthly reign and rule of Jesus the world does not crumble; it flourishes! The world is not dead, but alive and filled with people. Climate change has not eliminated humanity by heating them up nor has an ice age frozen them out. 20th Century fears of nuclear winter have not reduced people to mutant colonies nor is there any sort of zombie fiction. No, these things are simply not reality as God reveals in his scriptures. Crops still grow and people still live on. The earth is abundantly successful while Satan is absent. God built people to care for his world and they can do it.
Now, always treat the world, God’s creation, with respect. Don’t say in your heart, “because it will go on and on I don’t need to be careful with it.” No, you should recycle. You should take care of things. That, after all, was Adam’s mandate.1
Lane Ulrich says
After I wrote this and was tooling around on the news I came across this page: https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/mike-pence-s-holocaust-day-message-sparks-jewish-outrage-1.5768602
The author, Allison Sommer, pointed out that much of the language used by Mr. Pence was had legitimate Jewish roots. I found myself intrigued by this article for two reasons. First, my curiosity was piqued by the author not making the tweets a platform for a similar rant. It seemed to be a legitimate look at what was actually going on. It was not merely reactionary journalism. Second, the tweets grounded me, again, in the nature of interpersonal conflict. The people Satan brings against Israel in the future will be of similar vehemence. That vehemence exists in many quarters today even though my day-to-day experience is somewhat isolated from it.