It’s nice to see sunlight today here in this inland portion of Northern California. My weather app says clouds are returning this evening with a 30% chance of two-thousandths of an inch of rain. We can all use a little light in our lives. And while the weather app’s forecasts are often off the mark, they are still good for the occasional laugh.
Light might sometimes appear to be in short supply, crowded out by darkness. That isn’t how light works however — light overcomes darkness. If it doesn’t, it isn’t really light.
In my daily information feeds, streaming in through Substack and other platforms, I see thick darkness penetrated by bright but narrow rays of light, the “flashlights” of the authors. Some of the authors are shedding much light on one facet or another of what is behind the darkness.1
The flashlights, however, do not overcome the darkness. They are not bright enough, and the darkness is of a different nature than the light of human reason. Our situation is growing darker by the day, and a different approach to the problem is called for. We face an existential threat that can be felt and experienced, but not seen. Like others, I have described the feeling as “spooky”, but my specific term for the phenomenon itself is “spiritual warfare”.
I approach this topic a little differently than do most of my friends and acquaintances. My life has not been that of someone who follows a definite path and stays with it, although do I know people like that. Mine suggests more a “lover of leaving”, as in Come, come, whoever you are. I went through a phase where I “dabbled in the occult”, and I saw things then that I rather wish now that I hadn’t, although the experience does help me see more clearly in the dark.
There is something we can’t see that is messing with us terribly, and wants us dead. I noticed an escalation of some kind toward the end of 2019, and others more astute than I noticed it earlier that year. I didn’t know where it was leading, but I didn’t have to wait very long to find out.
The Apostle Paul wrote this about the “something”:
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” — Ephesians 6:12 (NASB 2020, italics removed)
The ancient Greek text behind this translation makes for an interesting word study, but I won’t go there right now. Let’s just say that Paul had a very specific vocabulary for describing the unseen actors.
Up against this kind of opposition, we can scratch our heads bald asking “why”, and never glimpse an answer. We need light. The Apostle John wrote about that light:
“In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.” — John 1:4-5 (NASB 2020)
(See verse 17 for the antecedent of “Him”.)
Here I must go “Greeky” for a moment. The word translated “grasp”, κατέλαβεν (katelaben), can positively mean “to make something one’s own, win, attain“ (BDAG). In the negative, it could be read as “the darkness did not win”. The NASB footnotes the word with “Or overpower“, which makes more sense in English.
Other writers have shared their understanding of what is going on in this world of ours, what they think we need to do about it, and how weird it is that it is happening at all. I am just passing along a little of what has been handed down to me, and offering a meager attempt at clarification, of filling in the blank beside “why?”.
It really is time to rethink the limits of our abilities, and the whole notion of whether we are even capable of saving ourselves from whatever might come along. The best time to do that would be before the “something” eats us alive. One possible starting point would be reading the above quoted passages in context.
At the time I wrote this, I hadn’t quite realized that some of that truth shining in the darkness is being produced by people whose purpose is to distract us by pointing us repeatedly at one thing so to distract us from noticing another thing. The darkness is thick.
Came across your stack via the comments over at Tessa Fights Robots. Had to come see what you're up to. Well. Not too many people these days talking about the End Times, even if you are somewhat cloaking it. I grew up with the prophesies, spent much of my younger life in fear of not making the "milestones" (marriage, kids, etc.), and mad at God that he'd plunked me down in this particular time (and this time really is different because the tech is ready and the elites are squeezing the trigger).
Anyway, have returned to Christ and am watching with dread and, I have to admit, a great deal of interest how things are unfolding. Everyone does seem to ask 'why' a lot. Go ahead and tell them. A few will understand, but most won't. It's pretty late in the day.
I look forward to reading more of your essays. Cheers.