I am concerned. I am concerned for you. I am concerned for all that’s important to you. I am concerned for our world. I am concerned for myself and my loved ones. As world events escalate, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to get up in the morning with an optimistic attitude. Too many factors exist that seek to tear down and destroy all that is good, loving and kind. Our hope for now and the future is constantly assaulted and the only way to overcome these truths is with the greater truth.
Since early 2020, every one of us worldwide has been forced to live in the most surreal reality we’ve ever known. The relentless mental inquiry just trying to make sense out of our experiences is exhausting. I’m reminded of the stories Rod Serling created for the 1960s television program The Twilight Zone, where we watched people try to maneuver through bizarre events, some taking them to the borderline of insanity. Everything we have believed to be true has been challenged, forcing us to reconsider who and what we trust, and reconsider our essential belief system—our life foundation.
One help for us in these troubled times is the knowledge that facts are not necessarily the truth. For example, it may be a fact your hair is blonde, but that may not be the truth. We are living in a time of the world’s history where evil has greatly increased to an extent we’ve never known. The facts are daunting and we’re faced with them daily for now. However, the facts are not necessarily the truth.
Another help is to realize our physical world is temporary while the spiritual world is eternal. I encourage you to remain focused on the greater truth—the eternal truth. What we are going through today, no matter how inconsistent with what we believed and hoped for—no matter how painfully grievous—the greater truth will prevail. It always does.
Imagine living in Europe during World War II experiencing all the evil atrocities first hand. Not only did a horrific number of Jewish people suffer greatly—something we must never allow to occur again—but many German civilians suffered too. I met Renata Zerner, who lived as a teenager in Nazi Germany. She gave me her published memoir, Dance on the Volcano: A Teenage Girl in Nazi Germany. Even more graphic and shocking is the anonymously published diary A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City.
The original Twilight Zone stories and those from the more recent remade series are fiction, allowing us some ability to keep emotionally detached—knowing they’re not real. But reading memoirs and diaries, learning unimaginable atrocities suffered, yet knowing they survived, offers hope. Likewise, when we read the Old Testament, knowing it provides historical perspectives of the relentless patterns of evil and our human bent to follow evil, we find hope. Certainly not hope in the truth of humanity, but hope in the truth of God.
Our generation is being allowed to live on this planet to prove the existence, character and nature of God. Perhaps you haven’t thought of it this way. Once World War II was won and evil had been overcome, the greater truth of God was celebrated. Through the Nuremberg trials, people were held accountable for their crimes against humanity. We must draw from this historical truth and from the authority we have in Christ and pray, expecting God to avenge us for His name’s sake.
With historical consideration of the many times God’s people got caught up in and overcome by evil—the many times evil believed it had won—God has ever and only provided a time for people to realize their part in the advancement of evil, repent and call out to Him, then experience His loving faithfulness in delivering them from evil.
Just as Pharaoh was forced to admit not only does God exist but He is the Creator and supreme over all, so too will we see truth prevail in our day.
In the same way the Hebrew people lived through but were not devastated by the plagues God brought to allow the Egyptians time to repent—for those who wanted life to choose God—so are we seeing the mercy and grace at work in the world today.
We cannot deny that our hope for now and the future has been under tremendous assault, but the greater truth of our hope in Jesus Christ will prevail. We have the evidence of history as our proof. We have God’s prophetic promises as our future.
“For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.
“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Mal. 4:1-6, ESV). {eoa}
This article originally appeared at pamelachristianministries.com.
Pamela Christian is an award-winning author, speaker and media host. An ordained international minister, she holds an honorary doctorate of divinity from HSBN International School of Ministry and is certified in apologetics from Biola University. She is a member of the Bethel Leaders Network and hosts the podcast Faith to Live By on the Charisma Podcast Network. To learn more, visit pamelachristianministries.com.
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