The Prevailing Plan in the Middle East

As the USA and other countries debate bombing Syria, or getting them to give up their chemical weapons (do they really think so?), they may think they will change the course of things. Not likely.

I’ll go so far as to suggest that whether the USA strikes Syria or not, it won’t change much in the big picture. Two reasons: First, the big picture is too big and too complicated and too intractable for any outsider to change without massive commitment and carnage. Americans have come to realize that from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Second, neither our nation nor any other is Lord of history. The government talks and acts as if we are. But we’re not. Whatever we do, or don’t do, we will ultimately play into the hands of the Lord of history.

The news today plays like the news would have in the Old Testament. First Egypt, then Assyria, then Babylon, then Greece, then Rome–all had their own economic, political and military agendas. They didn’t even know or care about Yahweh, the God of Israel, who claimed to be the one true God.

They left Israel alone or attacked it as they they wished–or thought they wished. But ultimately, behind their national agendas, God had a bigger agenda. All along, he was working through these nations to do his will. And when they weren’t where they should have been, he zapped them to keep things with his plan–witness the 185,000 troops dying overnight in 2 Kings 19:35 and the immediate rise of Babylon, which was the next phase of God’s plan.

What we’re seeing today, especially in the Middle East, is so similar. Can you see how the USA or others may do whatever they do, yet it all plays into God’s greater (maybe end-time) plan?

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Photo credit:  http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/