Everyone will bow their knee to something. The High and Lofty One[1] is drawing lines in the sand and testing hearts: Will you bow to God, or the government?
I’m not asking you what you think about the 2020 US Election or Capitol riot. I don’t care. I live in Iran, and nothing in me envies your democracy. I asked you this in 2019’s Sheep Among Wolves II: “If democracy is so good for the Kingdom, why are the US and Europe in the state they’re in now?” And that was before COVID-19 closed your church doors. I don’t care about your politics. I care about whether or not your obedience to Jesus can survive the pressures of a pandemic, and everything that will follow. I care about whether your church culture actually makes disciples who actually make disciples. We all want revival, but we don’t have it because we’re not ready for that kind of intake. Yet God will get us there. Perhaps 2020 was the first birth pang.[2] After all, no event has touched and unified the nations of the earth like the coronavirus pandemic has done—except the Flood.[3] This is the first time the nations of the earth have been touched by the same event at the same time since the Flood.
Since the “days of Noah.”[4]
So I don’t care about your political positions. I care about how you respond, and how those you are discipling respond, to the “days of Noah” before the Son of Man returns. Will He find faith on the earth?[5] The One on the throne[6] is already pushing us into the valley of decision: what do we love, who do we trust, and where are our allegiances? Our affections? When Jesus returns, He comes to a Bride mature in both power and love.[7] She is the wheat, yet her counterfeit, the harlot, will likewise grow mature in her carnal lusts. She is Babylon. Babylon is the tares. Consider the parable:
The Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while people were sleeping, his enemy came, sowed weeds among the wheat, and left. When the plants sprouted and produced grain, then the weeds also appeared. The landowner’s servants came to him and said, “Master, did you sow good seed in your field? Then where did the weeds come from?”
“An enemy did this,” he told them.
“So, do you want us to go and pull them up?” the servants asked him.
“No,” he said. “When you pull up the weeds, you might also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At harvest time I’ll tell the reapers: ‘Gather the weeds first and tie them in bundles to burn them, but collect the wheat in my barn.’”[8]
Want to know the thing we’ve learned as leaders in the fastest-growing, rapidly reproducing disciple-making movement in the world? (In Iran!) It’s simple: Persecution keeps you clean. The preservation of the tares—for now—gives you the best opportunity to survive until the Day of the Lord, the return of Jesus: “the harvest.” But I want to do something perhaps unusual now, looking 5-10 years down the road, and lay some of the tools out that I think we’re going to need to live and lead through the days ahead, fervently committed to Jesus. We overcome by His blood, the word of our testimony, and a refusal to love our lives in this age at the cost of the next.[9] Death before disobedience.
As we exited 2020 and entered the decade it has christened, I am reminded of the world a century ago. Many nations—though not all—had soaked battlefields with their blood, stopping just before the New Year clocked '20 in its gauge. World War I, the “Great War,” lasted years longer than the first Christmas it was meant to end by. By its end, the original Islamic Caliphate—the Ottoman Empire—was dismantled. Henry Ford was cranking his assembly lines. Europe began to rebuild. Factories in the US propelled the young nation into unprecedented prosperity. The Prohibition Era reigned; so did speakeasies. Everybody everywhere was so grateful to have survived the Endless War, and hedonism found new heights (and depths) to take the minds and hearts of men and women. We call this period “the Roaring 20s”—and they roared indeed until Black Tuesday’s crash brought the jubilant decade to a screeching, devastating halt on October 29, 1929, just a couple weeks shy of the ten year anniversary of Armistice Day.
We ourselves are living in a hinge of history, but we fear too few are noticing. Do you? You love Jesus. You read your Bible. But can you read the skies?[10] Do you know where we’re headed? Do you have clarity on what your Father is doing, or what it will mean when His Son comes again?[11] Remember the words of the prophet Daniel:
Suddenly, one like a son of man
Was coming on the clouds of Heaven.
He approached the Ancient of Days
And was escorted before Him.
He was given dominion,
And glory, and a Kingdom;
So that those of every people,
Nation, and language
Should serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
That will not pass away,
And His Kingdom is one
That will not be destroyed.[12]
Let me ask you this: What do you think got Jesus executed? Consider the turning point in His trial:
The high priest stood up and said to Him, “Don’t you have an answer to what these men are testifying against You?” But Jesus kept silent. The high priest said to Him, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
“You have said it,” Jesus told him. “But I tell you, in the future you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has blasphemed! Why do we still need witnesses? See, now you’ve heard the blasphemy. What is your decision?”
They answered, “He deserves death!”[13]
Isaiah told us (and Paul confirmed) this One, this Son of Man, will one day have the reverence of the nations. Every knee will bow to Him. Every tongue will confess His Lordship, His supremacy—His “name above all names.”[14] Yet before that final vindication, that just and deserved worship, He is pressing and testing all of us: Who do you bow to now? What name do you pledge upper allegiances to now? Is it Jesus? Or is it Babylon? Are you Daniel? Or will you buckle, cave, and cower in the corner as if the time of trouble[15] could possibly pass you by? Are you offended by His eternal purposes and their impact on your lifetime? Do you realize this is your time? Lean into it—because your best days are ahead.
“But the time is coming,” says the Lord, “when people who are taking an oath will no longer say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who rescued the people of Israel from the land of Egypt.’ Instead, they will say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the people of Israel back to their own land from the land of the north and from all the countries to which He had exiled them.’ For I will bring them back to this land that I gave their ancestors.”[16]
Hear what God has said through Jeremiah: He will stage a Greater Exodus. All the nations will see it. And when the Body of Messiah worldwide endures the tribulation unlike any other,[17] we will operate in signs and wonders just like the days leaving Egypt, and just like the days of the apostles just after the Ascension. God wants the people of the earth to know Him.[18] That’s our job. That’s our mission. That’s our mandate. And if we know Him, we will be the “wise” who will do “great exploits.”[19]
Your neighbors, your family, your friends are all about to give themselves headlong to the “Roaring 20s” of our millennium. But you, Daniel, you stay sober.[20] You redeem the time.[21] You discern the skies.[22] And you keep a backbone in you. Do not bow the knee in Babylon. It will not be easy. We want revival—and it’s coming, but it’s coming with persecution. Everyone wants Antioch, but we forget that it was the persecution in and destruction of Jerusalem that birthed Antioch. Everyone wants the Moravian lamp stand, but it was the persecution in Prague that birthed the Moravian movement. This persecution, these tares, are the fire that purge you to preserve you. Persecution keeps you clean. It keeps your affections in check. It keeps your allegiances guarded. It safeguards you against bowing your knee to an idol in Babylon.
And you know the best part about this? God can turn a tare into a wheat. That’s where you come in. As your friends, family, and neighbors give themselves to drunkenness and debauchery to evade the stress of these birth pangs, as they try to return to pre-COVID “normal,” you will walk with discernment, clarity, and truth—and you will love them in word and deed. Jesus was accused of being a drunk and a glutton because He frequented keggers and parties.[23] Why? “The Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost.”[24] And the drunks and gluttons and prostitutes at those parties became disciples, who became apostles. They changed everything. You’ve heard Jesus’ name yourself because of their love and obedience to Jesus.
No one, regardless of all their best intentions, can lead anybody anywhere if you don’t know where you’re going. Jesus is the “Good Shepherd,” and His sheep hear His voice.[25] One of the things you’ll see the Lord emphasizing in your life is trained discernment. We love the power and mission of getting “sent out” in Matthew 10 and Luke 10, but we are useless if we don’t first do John 10: We are His sheep. He is our Shepherd. Where He leads, we follow. And we follow where He leads because we have ears to hear what He speaks.[26] If we don’t learn how to hear and obey Him now, how exactly do we think we’ll live through globally unprecedented crises? We ourselves will just be part of the crowd on the wide road that leads to destruction.[27] Die to your good intentions. Get in the Word. Listen to His voice. And obey what you hear. That’s the only way to grow as the wheat.
The tares will grow to full maturity. The harlot will grow to full maturity. Man’s carnal lusts and pride and intoxicating enterprises will grow to full maturity. The antichrist spirit of deception, seduction, and confusion will quietly, subtly, stealthily draw men and women worldwide into delusion. The Bride, the Body of Jesus, is the bulwark. The prophetic witness of the Gospel of the Kingdom[28] and her Great King[29] is the only thing the nations need right now, but you cannot take to people that which you do not know.
Do not let your love grow cold.[30] Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.[31] So go, make disciples. Teach them to obey everything Jesus has commanded you. Babylon is burning—and you need to help pull people out of it before she falls.[32] The victorious Bride we see in Scripture—even when the Antichrist is given power and authority to persecute and abuse her—overcomes by the blood of Jesus, the word of her testimony, and not loving her life even unto death.[33] She locks eyes with Him in eternity, the joy set before her,[34] and resolutely declares: "Death before disobedience."
PASTOR X is the Director of Global Catalytic Ministries. He lives and serves in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Meet X and his ministry family in Sheep Among Wolves Vol. II. Support the leaders of the Iranian disciple-making movement here. Sign up for resources on how to make disciples who make disciples here.
[1] Isaiah 57:15
[2] Matthew 24:8
[3] See Genesis 6
[4] Matthew 24:37; Luke 17:26
[5] Luke 18:8
[6] Revelation 4:2
[7] Revelation 19:7
[8] Matthew 13:18-23, CSB (emphasis added)
[9] Revelation 12:11
[10] Matthew 16:1-4
[11] See John 5:19
[12] Daniel 7:13-14, CSB
[13] Matthew 26:62-66, CSB
[14] Philippians 2:9
[15] Isaiah 2:19; Revelation 6:15
[16] Jeremiah 16:14-15, NLT
[17] Daniel 12:1; Revelation 7:14
[18] Revelation 7:9
[19] Daniel 11:32
[20] 1 Thessalonians 5:6-8; 1 Peter 5:8
[21] Ephesians 5:16
[22] Matthew 16:1-4
[23] Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34
[24] Luke 19:10
[25] John 10:27
[26] Matthew 11:15; 13:9; Mark 4:9, 23; Luke 8:8; John 10:27; Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22
[27] Matthew 7:13
[28] Matthew 24:14
[29] Psalm 48:2; Matthew 5:35
[30] Matthew 24:12
[31] 1 John 4:4
[32] Revelation 18:4; see also “A Tale of Two Cities” by Dalton & Anna Thomas in Ballads of the Revelation from FAI STUDIOS, 2020
[33] Revelation 12:11
[34] See Hebrews 12:2
