That is precisely why his response to a question I asked him really surprised me.

We were talking about artificial intelligence, automation, digital systems, and the increasingly obvious convergence taking place between governments, finance, communication, commerce, education, identity, and machine intelligence. And, the fact that it feels like we are witnessing the construction of an entirely new operating system for civilization.

Layer by layer, a new civilizational architecture is assembling itself around us through digital identity systems, AI-mediated communication, predictive algorithms, biometric integration, cashless economies, automated logistics, smart infrastructure, personalized information streams, and forms of surveillance increasingly normalized through convenience and promises of safety. Even human relationships are becoming progressively mediated through screens, platforms, and machine-curated realities, reshaping how we communicate, perceive one another, and experience the world itself.

A few times during our conversation, he casually reflected, “It’s going to be interesting to sit back and watch this experiment.”

He used the word “experiment” several times.

Deep down, I think many people sense that this is exactly what is happening. Humanity is entering an unprecedented civilizational experiment. This isn’t just another technological transition within an evolving society, but rather a profound environmental transformation of human life itself. We are rapidly constructing a world in which nearly every aspect of our reality is becoming mediated, tracked, digitized, optimized, simulated, or machine-assisted. Our world is a place where the natural rhythms that shaped humanity for thousands of years are steadily being replaced by synthetic rhythms engineered for efficiency, convenience, stimulation, and centralized control.

Most people, though, still speak about technology as if it were a collection of neutral tools sitting on top of our ordinary everday life.

But that framing is becoming dangerously outdated.

Technology is rapidly becoming the only environment humans are permitted to live in. It is becoming the atmosphere inside which modern consciousness itself is being formed.

A child born today enters a world where screens are present before their language fully develops, meaning that their imagination forms under algorithmic influence before they have the maturity to understand what is happening to them. Their social life, education, entertainment, communication, identity, aspirations, fears, desires, and worldview are all increasingly filtered through systems designed to maximize engagement, extraction, predictability, and behavioral influence. The machine is no longer outside us. It is training us from birth.

So eventually I asked my friend what felt like the obvious question.

“So, in your opinion, what’s the alternative?”

He didn’t hesitate.

“Going Amish.”

He said it immediately, almost instinctively, as though somewhere beneath decades of faith in modern progress, he already understood that eventually humanity would arrive at a fork in the road where there would be very little stable ground left in the middle. The great bifurcation is upon us.

I think many people are beginning to sense this now, even if they can’t fully articulate it yet.

“Going Amish” refers to the growing realization that human beings will soon have to make a conscious decision about whether their lives will remain rooted in embodied reality, household life, local interdependence, and the natural rhythms of creation, or whether they will become increasingly absorbed into seamless technological systems that mediate nearly every aspect of existence.

What struck me most about our conversation was the fact that I had already arrived at a remarkably similar conclusion, although through an entirely different path. Over the past several years, the Edenic template for human life has come into increasingly sharp focus for me as I have tried to honestly evaluate the trajectory of modern civilization and the mounting fragmentation surrounding us. The more I have reflected on Scripture, family, health, childhood, community, stewardship, nervous system exhaustion, technological dependence, and the conditions required for genuine human flourishing, the more clearly it has seemed that the Kingdom answer is a return to rightly ordered living.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
— Romans 12:2

Not escapism, but re-embodiment. Not fear-driven isolation, but the rebuilding of coherent households, meaningful work, living relationship with creation, and deeply rooted communities ordered around Christ rather than systems.

What felt so fascinating to me was realizing that despite our profoundly different worldviews, we had both recognized the same essential truth: the way out of the machine-trap is not political, technological, or ideological. It is civilizational. Human beings must begin recovering the original templates for life on earth that exist outside the machine, or we risk losing touch with the very conditions that make us recognizably human in the first place.

“Going Amish” means that eventually people will have to choose whether they are fundamentally orienting their lives around the machine infrastructure or around embodied human reality (our original design). There will come a point where trying to maintain a deeply human life inside a fully integrated technological system will become virtually impossible.

For a long time, people have assumed there would always be a comfortable middle road available to us. We imagined that we could selectively participate in technological civilization while remaining essentially untouched by its deeper effects.

We believed we could use the systems without being shaped by them.

We were wrong.

The convergence now taking place in our midst changes that equation entirely because the systems themselves are beginning to interlock… banking, communication, identity, work, transportation, medicine, education, commerce, social life, and information are all slowly merging into one cetralized digital ecosystem. The more integrated these systems become, the harder it becomes to meaningfully opt out of any individual layer without experiencing friction across all the others, meaning that eventually we will be forced to be either “all in” or “all out”.

This is why so many people right now are feeling a low-grade psychological pressure building around them even if they can’t fully articulate it… They can sense that participation in the machine is gradually becoming less optional, that the world is reorganizing itself around total integration, and anyone who wishes to live differently is beginning to feel increasingly eccentric, inefficient, inconvenient, or even suspicious.

But what if the instinct to step away isn’t irrational at all? What if it is actually profoundly sane?

Because underneath all the modern technological excitement lies an uncomfortable question that modern civilization rarely asks honestly anymore: what kind of human being is this system producing? What is it actually doing to the human nervous system, the human spirit, the human family, the human body, our attention spans, and our relationship to reality itself?

We are watching the industrialization of human consciousness. My friends, this is the beast system.

People now spend enormous portions of their lives inside environments designed to manipulate their attention, emotions, desires, identity, and perception at scale. Most modern citizens absorb more information in a single week than previous generations encountered in entire months or years, yet much of this information has almost no meaningful connection to our lived reality or actionable responsibility. Human beings are emotionally processing wars, scandals, disasters, ideological battles, celebrity conflicts, social outrage, global fear cycles, economic instability, and algorithmically amplified psychological triggers every. single. day. while sitting physically isolated inside LED-lit homes, disconnected from neighbors, extended family, land, local production, and embodied community life.

This creates a profound form of fragmentation, cuasing the nervous system to remain in a constant state of low-level activation while actual agency steadily declines. People begin confusing observation with participation. They consume the spectacle of civilization “out there” while slowly losing touch with the physical realities that sustain their own actual life.

Meanwhile, many of the very things that have historically made human beings psychologically stable, resilient, and deeply rooted are rapidly disappearing from our modern life. Multi-generational households are increasingly rare, local culture continues to weaken, and many of the shared rituals and rhythms that once held communities together have slowly faded away.

Practical competence is quietly eroding as more and more aspects of ordinary life are outsourced to systems, subscriptions, algorithms, and devices, while children spend less time outdoors in living environments and more time inside digitally mediated ones. Meals, once the natural center of family rhythm and meaningful conversation, have become hurried, distracted, and fragmented by crazy schedules, omin-present screens, and constant interruption. The wisdom of elders is increasingly displaced by algorithmic authority and endless streams of new information, while human attention itself begins to splinter under the relentless pressure of stimulation, urgency, and noise.

Even friendship is changing shape, gradually becoming more performative and transactional as relationships are filtered through curated identities rather than formed through embodied presence, shared work, long conversations, mutual reliance, and years of real life lived together. For many people now, it is entirely normal to spend more time interacting with glowing screens than with wind, water, soil, silence, stars, animals, or unstructured human conversation, despite the fact that these are the very conditions within which human beings were created to flourish.

And yet despite all of this “connection,” loneliness, anxiety, depression, confusion, and meaninglessness continue to rise, rise, rise!

At some point, we have to ask ouselves whether this trajectory represents true advancement at all, because the farther we drift from our Edenic roots and the natural rhythms human beings were designed to live within, the more layers of distortion we seem to normalize as ordinary life.

What we are experiencing is not political frustration or cultural fatigue. I want to suggest that it is biological and spiritual disorientation. Human beings evolved in relationship with living systems. Sunlight. Seasons. Water. Animals. Community. Physical labor. Rhythmic work and rest. Real conversation. Silence. Shared meals. Local responsibility. Interdependence. For nearly all of human history, reality itself was tactile, relational, and embodied. Yet, the modern world increasingly replaces these experiences with abstraction, simulation, speed, and endless cognitive overload.

This is why so many people now fantasize about cabins, farms, villages, gardens, homeschooling, local trade, craftsmanship, and analog beauty.

I believe the body itself is trying to remember how to be human again.

People are beginning to realize that convenience has hidden (and extreme) costs. Every layer of friction removed from life also removes opportunities for competence, patience, cooperation, resilience, and relationship. A civilization built entirely around convenience slowly produces fragile people because difficulty itself is often what creates strength, wisdom, adaptability, and maturity.

The old village structures understood this intuitively. Human beings were meant to belong to actual places. To know who grew their food. To know who built their homes, and who would help them when they became sick or old. To contribute visibly to a living community rather than disappearing anonymously into massive systems.

Modern society promised liberation through hyper-individualism, but what we actually received was isolation. The autonomous consumer became detached from family networks, local economies, natural rhythms, practical production, and increasingly dependent on distant centralized systems for nearly every aspect of survival.

And this kind of machine-dependence reshapes people, fundamentally.

A person who cannot feed themselves, repair anything, educate their children independently, build local relationships, regulate their own attention, or function without digital infrastructure becomes extraordinarily vulnerable during periods of instability. Not merely economically vulnerable, but psychologically vulnerable.

This is why a sovereign future will increasingly belong to those who begin rebuilding small resilient ecosystems of human life now… deeply rooted networks of trust, skill, family, faith, and practical interdependence. Small family compounds (Kinsteads), intentional friendships, shared land projects, local trade networks, homeschooling cooperatives, gardens, workshops, multi-family living, slow craftsmanship, analog education, rhythmic living. Basically, human-scale communities where our children can grow up surrounded by real responsibility, competence, conversation, and people rather than endless digital stimulation.

Many people assume this kind of vision represents a retreat from the future, when in reality it may be one of the only serious attempts to move through what is coming while preserving one’s humanity, inner coherence, and keeping the essential contours of one’s soul intact.

The years ahead will favor those who remain inwardly ordered while the surrounding world becomes increasingly synthetic, fragmented, and destabilized. Scripture says that all creation groans in eager expectation for the revealing of the sons of God, and part of that revealing is the emergence of households and communities that are no longer governed by the nervous, machine-speed rhythms of Babylon, but are re-rooting themselves in wisdom, stewardship, clarity, and living relationship with God, one another, and the created world itself.

The families who learn to cultivate attention, practical competence, emotional steadiness, beauty, hospitality, and local interdependence will become quiet anchors in an age of massive disorientation, preserving forms of human life that are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain within fully mediated technological systems. And most importantly, our children will remember that reality itself still matters; that human beings were not designed to live entirely inside abstraction, stimulation, and machine-managed environments, but in relationship with creation, with one another, and with God.

There is something refreshingly stabilizing about touching living soil after spending years immersed in digital life and endless streams of information. There is something healing about candlelight, long meals around crowded tables, handwritten notes, music played live in a room instead of streamed into isolated ears, our children building forts outdoors, neighbors dropping by unannounced, books with worn pages, repairing objects instead of endlessly replacing them, and slowly learning the kinds of practical skills that reconnect people to the rhythms of the physical world again.

These real, analog things restore coherence between our body, mind, environment, and spirit, helping us recover forms of presence, attentiveness, and wholeness that technological civilization steadily fragments.

I suspect that one of the greatest dangers of the coming technological age is not simply surveillance or automation or AI itself. The deeper danger is that human beings gradually forget what unmediated reality feels like. They may forget the humble textures of slowness, silence, boredom, patience, craftsmanship, contemplation, and real presence, and become so acclimated to synthetic stimulation that ordinary life itself feels insufficient without constant digital augmentation.

And once that threshold is crossed, people become extraordinarily easy to manage because they no longer possess an internal reference point outside the system itself.

This is why getting on the off-ramp now matters.

Take action now from the recognition that once the systems become fully integrated, rebuilding human-scale life will become exponentially more difficult. Practical skills quietly disappear when they are no longer practiced by anyone you know, accessible land steadily concentrates into fewer hands, local community continues to weaken, and human attention becomes increasingly fragmented under constant technological immersion. Over time, dependency on “Babylon” deepens so gradually that most people barely notice it happening, while children raised almost entirely within synthetic environments begin to experience embodied life itself as unfamiliar, and even… uncomfortable.

The families moving toward more analog, land-rooted ways of living are simply trying to preserve enough humanity, enough coherence, and enough living connection to reality that their children will still know how to think clearly, build relationships, care for others, steward creation, and remain spiritually grounded, as the machine-driven world around them becomes unstable, manipulative, psychologically exhausting, or increasingly hostile to fully human life.

“They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.”
— Isaiah 65:21

More and more people are beginning to sense that the ultimate luxury in the years ahead may simply be the ability to remain fully human: spiritually awake, emotionally whole, rooted in reality, capable of wonder, and still deeply connected to God, creation, and one another in a world drifting steadily toward abstraction.

The Oikenes

The more I have reflected on all of this, the more I have come to feel that what is emerging in families returning to the land, rebuilding household economies, and gathering once again in small kin-centered settlements is the gentle stirring of something ancient and deeply human, that was encoded in our bones from Eden itself.

And while there have always been back-to-the-land movements, sustainability communities, off-grid experiments, and forms of nature-centered spirituality seeking escape from modernity, what I am highlight is fundamentally different in both orientation and spirit.

Becuase what I am talking about is not ultimately about environmental ideology, aesthetic homesteading, self-sufficiency as an identity, or a retreat into isolated alternative lifestyles.

It is about the restoration of rightly ordered household life under God; families re-rooting themselves in covenant, stewardship, embodied reality, interdependence, and the rhythms of creation as they intentionally rebuild human-scale ways of living outside the totalizing pull of technocratic culture.

“Every man shall sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.”
— Micah 4:4

I have begun thinking of this emerging parallel culture of Kingdom-rooted families as Oikene Kinsteads, a phrase I made up that carries within it the gravity of dwelling in alignment with our design, the memory of covenantal life in Christ, and the deep civilizational rootedness required for the age now unfolding before us.

I wanted to create a term that could carry some of the off-grid, civilization-adjacent qualities people associate with the Amish, without the old-order religiosity or cultural rigidity often attached to it, because what is emerging feels like the formation of something entirely new: an ancient-future expression of Kingdom life taking shape within the conditions of our own age.. I wanted language that could hold the spiritual gravity of households orienting themselves toward the reality of the Kingdom while remaining decentralized, deeply human, and wholly dependent upon Christ rather than institutions, ideologies, or systems to guide them.

Oikene draws from the ancient Greek root oikos, a word used throughout Scripture that carries a meaning far deeper than our modern understanding of “home.” An oikos was an entire living order: family, dwelling, land, stewardship, inheritance, provision, rhythm, economy, memory, and belonging woven together into a coherent whole.

It is the same root concept behind passages speaking of salvation coming to an entire household, revealing how deeply covenantal and multi-generational the biblical vision of LIFE truly was. Long before the rise of massive centralized systems and industrial dependency, the oikos was the fundamental unit of civilization itself! Within it, children were formed, food was cultivated, wisdom was preserved, skills were passed down, elders were honored, worship was practiced, and identity emerged organically through shared life across generations. The household was not a detached refuge from the “real world”; it was the very center of human continuity, responsibility, and Kingdom life.

It is also fascinating that from this single Greek root we eventually inherited both the words ecology and economics. In the modern world, we tend to separate these ideas entirely, but originally they emerged from the same source. Ecology, in its deepest sense, is the study of the household of life itself, the relationships between living things and the environments that sustain them. Economics originally referred to the management of the household, the ordering of resources, relationships, production, and stewardship within the oikos. Both words point back to the same ancient understanding, that healthy life emerges from rightly ordered households living in harmony with reality.

Those of us turning from the machine, back to our original design are the Oikene… the holistic, Kingdom householders returning to the land, to invest in a parallel world outside of the kingdom of this world.

So, in true Bonnie’s Dictionary fashion, here is my latest contribution to the vocabulary of the convergence era:

Oikene (oy-KEEN)
noun

1. A Kingdom-rooted way of life centered around the restoration of the household (oikos) as the primary locus of worship, stewardship, education, provision, kinship, and human formation.
2. An emerging parallel culture of decentralized families and kinsteads intentionally rebuilding human-scale living through covenantal relationships, local interdependence, embodied rhythms, land stewardship, craftsmanship, hospitality, and spiritual alignment under Christ rather than centralized technological systems.
3. A civilizational framework oriented toward dwelling rightly within creation, emphasizing rootedness, multi-generational continuity, practical competence, relational depth, and the preservation of fully human life amid increasing technological abstraction and synthetic mediation.

Etymology:
Coined from the ancient Greek oikos (“household,” “dwelling,” “family order,” “stewardship”) and inspired by oikoumene (“the inhabited world”).

Related forms:
Oikene Kinstead — a household or settlement ordered around Kingdom-centered, land-rooted, interdependent living.
Oikenic (adj.) — pertaining to the values, rhythms, or culture of Oikene life.

The Oikene vision is about the recovery of coherence.

It’s the recognition that human beings were not designed to live as fragmented digital units floating inside massive impersonal systems. We were designed for rootedness, stewardship, shared rhythms, multi-generational continuity, and meaningful participation in the maintenance of life itself.

The Oikene household becomes a place where children once again witness Kingdom reality directly instead of merely consuming representations of reality through screens. It becomes a place where our meals matter again, where practical competence matters again, where the elderly remain woven into daily life, where production and beauty return to the home, and where spiritual formation is embedded into ordinary living rather than outsourced to institutions.

This is where the idea of the Kinstead becomes so powerful as well.

The old English root stede or stead referred to a standing place, a dwelling place, a rooted habitation. Combined with kin, the word begins to describe something many people are already intuitively longing for: networks of households intentionally reweaving human life together at a local and relational scale.

Oikene Kinsteads are not isolated survival compounds cut off from the world in fear, hoarding all the things.

They are living settlements of spiritual and physical continuity.

Places where trust, responsibility, memory, craftsmanship, education, food, celebration, grief, and worship can remain embodied and soulful in an age becoming increasingly synthetic and disembodied.

I suspect that in the coming years, many families will slowly realize that the greatest form of wealth will no longer be technological immersion or endless mobility, but durable belonging.

Rambling gardens that know the sound of our voices. Analog homes filled with books, tools, music, bread, conversation, prayer, craftsmanship, and meaningful work. Small villages of families and trusted friends who know one another beyond curated identities and digital projections, sharing life together across seasons, burdens, and celebrations…

The Oikene are not anti-technology, we are simply unwilling to surrender the formation of our children, the integrity of our households, and the sacred architecture of human life to systems that cannot love, and can never truly know what it means to bear the image of God.

I find myself strangely excited to see who God ultimately calls onto this path, because I suspect the emerging Oikene awakening will gather together many people we never would have imagined standing side by side. Some will arrive through faith, others through exhaustion with modern life, others through observing technological convergence firsthand, and still others through an instinctive recognition that something essential in human civilization is slipping away.

We may begin from very different worldviews, vocabularies, and life experiences, yet increasingly arrive at the same realization: that a fully human life cannot survive indefinitely inside systems that continuously fragment attention, sever people from creation, dissolve households, mediate reality itself through machines, and slowly pull human beings out of alignment with the rhythms, relationships, and forms of living that our Creator designed us to flourish within.

That conversation with my boomer friend stayed with me precisely because it revealed this convergence so clearly. Despite our differences, we both recognized the same underlying truth… Somewhere beneath the political narratives, cultural tribes, and generational divides, many people are beginning to sense that the future will require a return to deeper forms of rootedness, embodiment, stewardship, kinship, and spiritual coherence. And perhaps that is part of what makes this moment so fascinating. The Oikene may not emerge from a single ideology, denomination, or movement at all, but from thousands of households quietly awakening to the same ancient memory at the same time.

What Scripture is pointing to as our future heaven is actually the restoration of God’s original creation, not the abandonment it it. From the beginning, God’s intention was always to dwell with humanity in Eden, in a world designed to be experienced, cultivated, and shared with Him. That intention hasn’t gone away, it carries forward and comes into fullness in the new heaven and the new earth.

This is the renewal of the world as it was originally designed.

It is life, here, on this earth, finally coming into its full expression! A lived reality that is vibrant, infinitely creative, dynamically relational, robust with joy, and deeply rooted in peace. Work that flows, families that flourish, land that responds, and a rhythm of life that feels whole and alive in every layer.

When Isaiah speaks about the future that is coming, he describes people living real lives, building homes, planting food, raising families, and worshiping God in a world that has been restored and brought back into its original intention.

We step back into coherence with our design.

Heaven isn’t you and me awkwardly plucking our golden harps on a cloud forever, wondering how long “eternity” actually lasts… It’s us in the age to come, fully alive, fully aligned with God, living on a restored earth and finally stepping into the roles we were always meant to embody. Every part of us finally integrated. Every part of life flowing in the harmony of the most. perfect. love.

So instead of thinking in terms of leaving the earth at the end of the age, it can help us to think in terms of the earth being brought back into alignment with God’s original design. Heaven and earth are no longer experienced as separate layers. At the end of the age, they will come together as one unified reality,open and totally connected, with God dwelling right in the midst of His people.

Scripture describes a tangible, lived-in world.

A healed environment.

A place where God’s presence fills everything, and where life finally unfolds the way it was always meant to.

Isaiah portrays the future life of humanity as it moves into eternity, still deeply recognizable, yet healed and restored to its rightful order. People build natural homes and live in them, surrounded by others doing the same. They plant food and eat what they grow. Families continue, marriages and births, work continues, and daily rhythms remain, but now everything operates without loss, fear, or instability.

“They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit”

-Isaiah 65:21

The emphasis here is on the continuity of embodied life, a seamless unfolding rather than a restart in a different realm. Human existence comes into coherence, every layer aligning as it was always meant to. Life carries forward in its fullness, now moving in rhythm with God’s design at every level.

Full coherence.

Creation is finally brought into its intended state, the fracture between heaven and earth is resolved, and what emerges is a fully integrated reality.

Isaiah 66:22 says, “For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me… so shall your offspring and your name remain.”

Your identity carries forward, intact and illuminated, unfolding into its fullest expression. What God formed with intention is brought into clarity, strengthened, and matured. You remain fully yourself, now free to live in the wholeness of who you were always created to be. Your legacy continues, your generations unfolding forward without interruption, each one held within a living thread of continuity. There is a deep sense of stability, where life carries on in alignment with God’s nature, steady and enduring.

But, to really comprehend this, we have to begin by disentangling two frameworks that have often been blended together: the Hebraic, creation-affirming worldview of Scripture, and the later philosophical tendency (influenced by Greek thought) to view the physical world as inferior or temporary.

The prophets, and Isaiah in particular, speak in a language shaped by restoration, continuity, and transformation, revealing the renewal and right ordering of all things.

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.”

-Isaiah 65:17

Now, at first glance, this can sound like total replacement, as if the current creation is going to be discarded (burned up) and something entirely different takes its place. But the Hebrew concept of “new” (ḥadāš) often means renewed, restored, and made fresh! This is the same conceptual framework seen elsewhere in Scripture, such as in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart”, which clearly implies the renewal of David’s heart that already exists.

In Isaiah 65:21–23, ISaiah describes people building houses, planting vineyards, bearing children, and enjoying the work of their hands. These are are grounded, embodied, and relational images.

“They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat…”

This speaks of the healed earth yet to be revealed, the world brought fully into right order at the close of this age. It stands beyond the millennial reign already fulfilled, pointing to what unfolds when all things are gathered into alignment and the threshold of eternity is crossed.

What stands out from this vision is how familiar and downright domestic it feels. The conditions that once shaped the human experience, loss, dispossession, and futility, are gone, yet the structure of life itself remains vital and alive. People are still living, building, cultivating, raising families, moving through the rhythms of the seasons. But, the difference is in the quality of it all. Work flows without strain or frustration, and time continues as a grace-filled rhythm, no longer marked by the kind of decay and exhaustion we’ve known. It is a world we will recognize, but now the architecture of it is restored, ordered, and whole… heaven on earth!

“For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me…” -Isaiah 66: 22–23

Here, even the markers of time remain. New moons and Sabbaths continue to anchor life in seasonal rhythms. Time moves in harmony, and the pulse of creation carries on, now aligned and radiant. What we have known as relentlessly measured time opens into lived time, where Chronos gives way to Kairos and each moment holds presence, meaning, and true connection. And worship is no longer set apart from life. It fills the world itself, woven into the cadence of days, seasons, and the gatherings of our beloved ones.

What Isaiah is revealing here is an Edenic continuity restored to its true form. Life does not begin again; it comes back into order. The earth itself was never the problem that had to be eliminated, it has always been the distortion within it that was the issue. So, in this renewal, that distortion is gone, and creation is free to move as it was always designed to.

This aligns precisely and poetically with the broader biblical arc.

In Genesis, Eden is a place where heaven and earth overlap. God walks with humanity in a shared space. But, the rupture that follows isn’t the destruction of the earth, but the fracturing of humanity’s relationship with the earth. The entire biblical narrative, from that point forward, is oriented toward the restoration of that union.

In Isaiah 11:6–9, the harmony of creation is restored:

“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb…
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.”

This is an ecological, relational, embodied peace-filled earth realm. Predation, violence, and disorder are undone, and creation itself is brought back into alignment with its original design.

“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus…
For waters break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert.”

-Isaiah 35

Again, the transformation is centered in the earth itself, brought into wholeness and life. Desolation opens into abundance, and what once lay barren begins to flourish and bear fruit.

This is Eden fully restored, not a floaty, invisible realm where we trail behind King David all day waiting for him to give us harp lessons… There is work to do! Lavender to plant, streams to play in, mountains to climb, fruit to pick, children to nurture!

From a theological standpoint, this raises a crucial point: redemption in Scripture is consistently restorative, not substitutive.

God doesn’t abandon His creation to start over. He redeems what He made. This is true of individuals, and it’s also true of the cosmos.

Paul echoes this directly in Romans 8:21:

“that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

Creation is not goig to be discarded; it’s going to be liberated.

Isaiah’s prophetic language, therefore, must be read in this context. The “new heavens and new earth” aren’t a separate realm detached from our current reality, but the same creation (this beautiful earth that we already know as home!) brought into full alignment with God’s original intention.

In Hebrew thought, “the heavens” (shamayim) point to the unseen dimension that interweaves with the physical world. The renewal of both “heavens” and “earth” speaks to the healing of their separation, a dimensional restoring of their unity so they move together in full alignment.

What emerges is not two locations (heaven vs. earth), but one unified reality.

All division is gone.

This also explains why Isaiah repeatedly emphasizes God dwelling with His people, not removing them elsewhere. In Isaiah 12:6:

“Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion,
for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

The direction of movement is not upward escape, but divine indwelling.

God comes near to us, and His presence fills the earth with indescribable glory, and home finally feels fully, truly, deeply safe.

This reshapes our entire eschatological expectation.

The aim for God’s children is to witness and partake in creation’s transfiguration, to live within a world brought into its full, intended beauty. The language of fire, judgment, and shaking throughout the prophets speaks to its purification, a refining that clears away corruption so that only what is true, enduring, and aligned can remain.

Isaiah 24, with its language of the earth breaking and shaking expresses this clearly. The disruption runs deep, exposing and undoing what is out of order, yet it doesn’t end in ruin. It prepares the ground for restoration. What is shaken is what cannot remain, and what endures is what is true.

This pattern carries through Isaiah’s vision. Corruption gives way under its own heaviness, and renewal rises from within creation itself, a refining that opens the way for a world set right again, where life can unfold as it was always meant to.

Okay, so what does this mean in practical terms?

It reveals that the future beyond the final return of Jesus is profoundly material, relational, and embodied. It is a life rooted in the land, shaped by meaningful work, nourished by food, carried through family, ordered by rhythm, and filled with worship, each part restored to its rightful place. Every dimension of life remains, except now free from the distortions that once fractured it. What emerges is a version of reality that is fuller, clearer, and more deeply alive than anything we have yet known.

It also brings much-needed clarity to the idea of being “whisked away” to a distant spiritual realm. In fact, throughout Scripture, it is often the unrighteous who are removed, while the righteous are described as remaining, inheriting, and dwelling in the land. That picture is very different from the modern rapture narrative that has been deeply embedded into the contemporary Christian imagination. Isaiah and the prophets consistently present a vision centered on restoration, and the healing and reordering of creation itself, until heaven and earth move together again under the fullness of God’s presence.

This helps separate some other issues that are often blended together. Scripture does speak of a present heaven where those who have died in the Lord are at rest, held in peace as they await what is to come. It is a real and sacred state, yet it is not the final expression described by the prophets. It carries the sense of anticipation, of something still unfolding…

In the same way, widely held ideas about a sudden removal of believers from the earth do not reflect the central prophetic movement. The emphasis throughout Isaiah, and across the broader biblical narrative, rests on what God is bringing into completion here. Salvation is revealed as the restoration of rightful order, where creation itself is renewed and God dwells fully with His people.

The movement of God’s story is always toward fulfillment.

What is now held in promise, and is presently experienced in part, will come together in a restored world where our life is fully aligned, embodied, and whole.

The Eden narrative is the anchor point to all this. Eden wasn’t a temporary prototype, it was always the intended design.

The new heaven and new earth are Eden fully realized, expanded, and secured, and we get to experience it! YYou get to experience being alive in the way it was always meant to be lived. You become fully alive as the person you were actually created to be!

Isaiah gives us the clearest window into this because he consistently ties future hope to the healing of creation itself. His language is earthy and beautifully narrative. People live, build, plant, and worship. And, the presence of God saturates everything.

When read together, these passages form a coherent theological structure: creation, corruption, judgment, then restoration.

(Not creation, abandonment, replacement.)

So the heaven that lies ahead is not the end of our beautiful earth, but the end of its distortion. It is creation released into clarity, and brought back into the fullness of what it was always meant to be.

This reframing restores a deep sense of meaning to our present moment.

If the future is a renewed earth, then what we cultivate, build, and tend here and now matters! If the trajectory is restoration, then our alignment begins now, woven into the way we live, create, and steward what has been entrusted to us today. The prophetic vision draws us into that purpose, rooting us more deeply in the world as it was designed to flourish. Isaiah opens a window into what the world is going to become, and invites us to begin living in the flow of that inevitable reality now.

Here is a “Coles Notes” lens to help us discern between the two worlds that exist among us… each seeking our agreement and devotion, and each functioning as a spiritual jurisdiction that will either dull and constrain us or bring clarity and freedom, depending on the choices we make.

The Kingdom of This World

1. Control over trust
   It seeks to secure our life-force through systems, structures, and external management rather than reliance on God.
2. Permission-based living
   Access to basic functions like movement, provision, and participation is granted or restricted by “authorities”.
3. Identity is assigned externally
   Identity becomes something assigned and reinforced through credentials, roles, data profiles, and social validation rather than something received and lived from within. It is measured by what can be verified, tracked, and recognized by external systems, not by your intrinsic design or calling. Over time, a person begins to relate to themselves through these layers, slowly disconnecting from who they were created to be.
4. Centralization of power
   Authority consolidates upward into fewer, larger systems that govern many, which distances decision-making from real people and concentrates power in ways that are harder to question, correct, or escape.
5. Fear as a motivator
   Decisions are driven by risk avoidance, safety narratives, and threat management. This drives decisions through anxiety, which narrows human discernment and leads people to trade long-term truth for short-term relief.
6. Efficiency over truth
   What works, scales, or optimizes is often elevated above what is right or aligned. Decisions are measured by efficiency, speed, and output rather than truth, integrity, or long-term consequence, which means that over time, this reshapes entire systems so that success can exist even when core principles are fundamentally out of order.
7. Dependency as stability
   People are trained to rely on interconnected systems they don’t control. This reliance is often framed as convenience and progress, making it feel both normal and necessary. But, over time, the ability to function as independent families weakens, even as the systems themselves become more complex. When those systems shift or fail, people are left with fewer options and less resilience than they realized.
8. Short-term compliance, long-term drift
   Small compromises accumulate over time, gradually reshaping belief and behavior.
9. Abstraction over embodiment
   Life becomes mediated through screens, data, and systems rather than lived physically and relationally. Human experiences are filtered, tracked, and interpreted through layers of technology instead of direct presence. Over time, this creates distance from reality itself, weakening connection, awareness, and embodied living.
10. Scarcity mindset
    Provision is framed as limited, competitive, and something that must be secured and held onto at all costs. This drives urgency, comparison, and a constant pressure to accumulate, often at the expense of trust. Over time, fear begins to replace faith, and decisions quietly shift toward protecting what systems can supply rather than trusting and aligning with God’s provision.
11. Conformity as belonging
    Inclusion is often tied to agreement with dominant norms or systems.
12. Reactive living
    People begin to respond to external pressures rather than acting from internal conviction, allowing urgency, social expectations, and shifting circumstances to dictate their choices instead of steady discernment rooted within them.

The Kingdom of Heaven

1. Trust over control
   Life is anchored in dependence on God rather than the need to manage every outcome, allowing decisions to flow from trust and alignment instead of control, and replacing anxiety over results with steady confidence in His provision.
2. Freedom is found within alignment
   Obedience to God brings clarity and movement, not restriction, opening a path that is clean and direct, where decisions become simpler and action becomes unburdened by confusion or fear.
3. Identity is received, not constructed
   A person’s identity is given by God and lived out, not assembled through external validation.
4. Distributed authority
   Responsibility and stewardship are carried at the household and individual level, not outsourced to distant institutions, shaping daily decisions, rhythms, and resources with intentional care. Authority becomes lived and practiced close to home, where our choices have direct impact and the accountability is real.
5. Peace as a driver
   Decisions flow from grounded clarity rather than fear or urgency, rooted in a steady mind that is not driven by pressure or reaction. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
6. Truth over efficiency
   What is right and aligned matters more than what is fast or scalable.
7. Resilient independence
   Systems may be used, but they are kept in their proper place as tools rather than masters, serving daily life without shaping its direction or determining its boundaries.
8. Integrity over time
   Small acts of obedience, practiced consistently, form a quiet foundation of strength, clarity, and steady stability over time.
9. Embodied living
   Life is physical, relational, present, and rooted in real environments.
10. Abundance mindset
    Provision is trusted to come as needed, received with open hands rather than grasped at and stored in fear. It is approached with a quiet confidence instead of urgency, allowing our decisions to remain aligned rather than driven by scarcity. This posture keeps our heart steady, free from the pressure to secure what God has already promised to supply.
11. Belonging through truth
    Connection is formed through shared alignment, not forced agreement, allowing relationships to grow from truth rather than pressure, and to remain steady without the need for uniformity.
12. Responsive living
    People act from discernment and conviction, responding from an inner clarity that has already been formed, rather than being pulled into decisions by urgency, pressure, or shifting circumstances.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” -Romans 12:2

Government debt levels, persistent inflation, and this new war are already reshaping our purchasing power and increasing the likelihood of tighter monetary controls, while the banking systems are quietly moving toward more centralized digital frameworks that will change how and when we can access our own money…

At the same time, food systems are becoming more consolidated and fragile, with fewer local redundancies, greater reliance on long supply chains, and increasing exposure to policy shifts, fuel costs, and manipulated environmental strain.

Layered on top of this is the steady expansion of digital identification and verification systems that are beginning to integrate finance, travel, healthcare, and access to essential services into a single, connected framework that assumes ongoing participation. For those of us who will not comply, this will not remain theoretical for long. It will quietly but materially reshape what is accessible, how our daily life is navigated, and which doors remain open, making it necessary to think ahead and establish alternative ways of living, transacting, and providing for our families while our current options are still readily available.

“The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.”
— Proverbs 22:3

None of these shifts on their own would be catastrophic necessarily, but their timing together creates a very narrow window where families like ours still have relative freedom to reposition, reduce our dependence on the grid, and build our more real-world stability.

This is why this

next year really matters.

This is about recognizing that the conditions for flexibility and preparation are still available now in a way they won’t be in the near future, I believe.

In my own family, we are making some significant changes as we prepare for the years ahead.

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” — Peter Drucker

This Summer

If you’re just getting started though, this is exactly what I would focus on this summer, in a very practical way:

First, I would clean up and secure our water. Most people are still drinking municipal tap water without thinking much about what is actually in it, including chlorine, fluoride, agricultural runoff, and trace pharmaceuticals. I would stop drinking it straight. The simplest upgrade is a gravity-fed filter, something stainless steel, like a Berkey, that does not rely on power. Alongside that, I would store water in the house. You don’t need anything complicated. Start with several food-grade containers, around 5–7 gallons each, and keep them in a cool, dark place. Rotate them every couple of months so they stay fresh. It’s also worth learning one simple backup method such as boiling or basic purification using a small amount of unscented household bleach in an emergency. The goal is to remove blind dependence on system infrastructure and make water something you are actively in the rhythm of stewarding.

Second, I would shift how we source and store food. Don’t bulk buy random items that are on sale, like I did years ago, but build a pantry around the real meals your family already eats. Choose a core set of meals and begin stocking the ingredients for those meals in depth so that what you store is actually usable from day to day. Focus on things like rice, oats, flour, beans, lentils, pasta, canned tomatoes, oils, salt, and simple spices. Add frozen foods that you already use, and if possible, invest in a small chest freezer to extend your storage. Slowly build toward having a few months of food on hand so that short-term disruptions do not immediately affect you.

Alongside this, I would treat food gardening as a necessary skill to develop. Even a modest garden changes your position because it reconnects your household to actual food production. Start small and grow what is reliable in your climate, things like potatoes, zucchini, beans, herbs, or tomatoes. The goal this summer is familiarity and consistency so that each season builds on the last… there is a huge learning curve to gardening, so you must begin now! This is also a good time to begin buying from local farms or farm stands regularly, even if it is just once a week. It builds relationship, supports local production, and gives you an alternative to large grocery chains. At the same time, learn one or two simple preservation methods such as freezing or dehydrating so that when food is abundant, you know how to benefit from it in the days ahead.

Third, I would make sure we have a way to cook without electricity. Most homes rely completely on electric appliances, which creates a gap if power is interrupted. A simple propane camp stove with extra canisters is enough to cover basic cooking needs. You can use it outside or indoors with proper ventilation. If you already have a barbecue, make sure it is in good working order and that you have fuel for it. The key is to practice using these now so they are familiar should you need it in an emergency.

“And the men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do…” — 1 Chronicles 12:32

Fourth, I would address heat in a very practical way. In our northern climate, this matters a lot. If your home relies entirely on the grid for heat, I would begin putting a backup plan in place. A properly installed wood stove is the most reliable long-term option, along with a supply of dry wood. If that is not feasible right now, focus on making your home more efficient by sealing drafts, adding insulation where possible, and having proper cold-weather gear inside the home such as wool blankets and layered clothing. It is also wise to think in terms of heating one or two rooms well rather than the entire house.

Fifth, I would reduce ongoing financial pressure. Debt is a point of leverage, and thais matters more in a tightening environment, because when systems are stable, debt feels manageable because payments are predictable and access to credit is easy. But, when external conditions shift (through higher interest rates, job instability, tighter lending, or more centralized control over banking and payments) that same debt can quickly become a pressure point. Minimum payments can rise, credit lines can be reduced or frozen, and missed payments can trigger penalties or restrict access to other services. If more systems become digitally integrated, debt will also begin to influence what you can access or how easily you can move through everyday life, especially if compliance or verification becomes more closely tied to your financial standing.

This is why reducing your debt (including mortgage debt) now is about removing points of control. Every balance you eliminate is one less lever that can be pulled on your household. This may mean making larger, uncomfortable decisions such as selling assets, downsizing your home, or significantly cutting expenses for a season to accelerate repayment. Those moves can feel like a step back in the short term, but they increase your freedom and resilience in a way that is difficult to overstate right now. The aim is to move toward a position where your basic living is not dependent on ongoing approval, borrowing, or access to revolving credit, so that as the external systems become more restrictive, your household remains self-directed.

Sixth, I would evaluate your current housing situation humbly and honestly. A large home that is expensive to run and maintain will not be an advantage in the years ahead. It increases your dependence on steady income, stable utilities, and rising costs that are largely outside of your control. A smaller, simpler home that you can rent or afford comfortably, heat efficiently, and manage without stress is far more resilient. If you are already sensing a move is on your horizon, prioritize what actually matters: access to clean (well) water, usable outdoor space for growing food, and distance from dense urban centers where disruptions tend to hit first and hardest. It is wise to begin moving in that direction while you still have time and choice.

On the same theme, there is also a necessary shift in how we think about space. Living in closer quarters is a strengthening choice. When families share rooms, space, and live in proximity, it builds resilience at a relational level. Children learn to navigate friction, contribute to the household, and live well with each other, because life is forcing it. Larger homes that separate everyone into private corners feel luxurious and comfortable, but they weaken relational dynamics over time. A more compact home brings the family back together, which is exactly what we need in the days ahead. The goal is tighter, stronger, and more cohesive living that will hold under pressure.

I would also at least consider the option of being able to leave Canada if needed. This is about having flexibility, and making sure your passports are in order, etc. Different countries will respond differently to economic pressure, supply strain, and policy shifts over the next few years. Some will remain easier to live in, especially for families who value autonomy in areas like food, education, and daily life. If international movement is within your capacity, even just beginning to understand your visa options, travel documents, or where you might go gives you another layer of choice. You might not use it, but having the option may be very valuable for your family.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
— Benjamin Franklin

Seventh, I would begin building practical household skills in a very intentional way. This means moving away from convenience-based living and becoming capable in the basics that will actually sustain your home. Learn how to cook from whole, basic ingredients without relying on processed foods or meal delivery programs. Get comfortable baking simple bread, preparing meals from pantry staples, and feeding your family without needing a store run every day. At the same time, begin learning how to handle small repairs around the house, fixing what breaks instead of automatically outsourcing it. These are foundational competencies. Every skill you build reduces your dependence on external systems and increases your confidence that your home can function well, even if support systems become less reliable.

Eighth, I would reduce reliance on constant digital access and begin reclaiming more privacy within your home. Many systems now assume you are always connected, always trackable, and always available. I would start keeping printed copies of important information such as phone numbers, account details, passwords, and key documents so that you are not dependent on a device to access your own life. Keep some cash at home in small denominations for everyday use if digital systems are interrupted for a couple of weeks. Practice going a day or two without relying on your phone for everything so that it becomes normal for you to “Sabbath” outside of the machine.

Alongside this, I would take a serious look at the number of listening and surveillance devices inside and around the home. Voice assistants, smart speakers, app-connected appliances, and doorbell cameras all introduce a layer of constant monitoring into what should be your private space. Removing these is an essential step toward regaining sovereignty over your home environment.

Ninth, I would intentionally build into my most local, aligned relationships, and I would treat this as urgent. This isn’t the season for non-intentional, wide social circles or chillin’ with casual acquaintances every weekend. Identify a small number of friends/families who are aligned in how they live and what they are preparing for, and begin building real, practical daily-life connection with them.

This means shared meals, honest conversations, planning together, and a clear understanding of what each household can offer. Over time, this becomes a working network, which… also requires letting go of shallow social obligations. Depth is what matters now. The kind of trust and collaboration we will need in the days ahead will only be built through consistency and shared effort over time. Families who are connected in this way will be far more stable than those trying to operate alone.

Tenth, I would establish a steady household rhythm, and I would treat this as foundational, no longer shaped by preferences or the pressure to keep everyone’s wish list filled. Regular meals, shared responsibilities, regular time in outside, and a predictable weekly flow create a massive sense of stability that everything else can build on. In the years ahead, nervous system regulation will matter far more than most people realize, which means intentionally slowing down the frantic pace of life and being very selective about what you give your time and attention to.

Living externally, constantly out, consistently busy, stimulated and maxed-out, will drain you and your children quickly. It creates a baseline of stress that makes it much harder to think clearly, make decisions, work cooperatively as a family, or adapt when needed. In contrast, a home with a consistent rhythm, where the days have a peaceful flow, meals are shared, and the children are actually learning to get along because it’s part of daily life, creates real stability. When there is regular space to rest and reset and slow down, life becomes truly nourishing and sustainable.

Eleventh, I would simplify everything you can in your life… rigorously. Complexity is a hidden liability. The more moving parts your life has, the more points of failure you carry, financially, logistically, and mentally. Too many subscriptions, too many commitments, too many possessions, too many systems you rely on all create friction when things tighten and life around you gets more stressful.

Start by reducing what you own. If you have excess furniture, clothing, equipment, or stored items that you do not use, begin letting it go. A lighter home is easier to manage, easier to clean, and easier to move if needed. Create margin in your days so you can actually think, respond to the deepest needs of your family, and adjust when needed.

Simplifying also means standardizing. Fewer meals on rotation, fewer places to be, fewer decisions to make each day. This reduces your mental load and makes your household more efficient. When life is simple, it is easier to maintain, easier to adapt, and far less fragile under pressure. When you remove what is unnecessary, what remains becomes stronger, more functional, and more aligned. Edit your life mercilessly in the days ahead!

If you spend this summer steadily working through even part of this, your family will be in a much stronger and more flexible position as things begin to intensify in the fall. Our goal is simple: to live less dependent on systems you cannot control, and more rooted in what you can steward well within your own home. While your heart has probably been sensing it’s time to come home for some time, now is really the season.

Ready, set… go.

“Therefore when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by the prophet Book of Daniel, standing in the holy place, (whoever reads, let him understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes…”

-Matthew 24:15

To understand the (let’s be honest) “freaky” phrase “abomination of desolation” used by Jesus here, we have to get out of the mainstream eschatology lane that Christians have been herded into in modern times, and understand that it is not just one thing, but a frequency. We have to let go of the idea that this is just one future moment still on the horizon of our current timeline.

What Jesus is giving us in the Gospel of Matthew 24:15–20 is a pattern to recognize, something living and repeating over cycles of time… a kind of signal embedded in history that tells us when something is going deeply, structurally wrong and requires physical + spiritual alignment to navigate.

At its core, the abomination of desolation is about what happens when a place that was meant to hold God’s presence becomes occupied by something that doesn’t belong there.

The moment something foreign and profaning steps into the space meant for divine indwelling, the impact is immediate and far-reaching, it distorts what was once clear and begins to reshape everything that flows from it.. And when this happens, Jesus calls for immediate discernment and decisive movement from his followers.

When we go back to the roots of this phrase in the Book of Daniel, the word translated “abomination” comes from the Hebrew shiqqûts (שִׁקּוּץ). It carries the sense of something detestable, something that violates and desecrates what is sacred… it is utterly defiling. It speaks of something entering into a space set apart for God and corrupting it by its very presence, introducing disorder where there was meant to be alignment.

In ancient Israel, this was when idols were set up in the temple, pagan altars where they should never have been, and imperial symbols were forced into a place that was meant to reflect heaven. The temple at the time was understood as the meeting point between heaven and earth, the place where God dwelt among His people. So when something alien entered that space it was a tearing of the fabric of Kingdom order itself.

Creation was being bent out of alignment.

I believe that history has already given us the first major fulfillment of this pattern.

In the first century, when Rome surrounded Jerusalem and eventually destroyed the temple, this was the full manifestation of what Jesus had warned about. The holy place was overtaken, and the center of covenant life was breached and dismantled. And the result was desolation, both physically and spiritually.

This marks the end of the old covenant system and the opening into a new phase of Christ’s Kingdom, no longer anchored to a physical temple but carried within His people themselves.

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

The dwelling place of God is no longer confined to stone and geography, but lives and breathes within those who belong to Him, shifting the center of sacred space from a building to your body!

I believe that Jesus’ words here must be understood as part of a prophetic patterning system that Scripture uses repeatedly when speaking about the end of an age. This kind of “end times” language isn’t just linear, where one event happens once at the very end of history, but it is also cyclical and layered, where a real historical fulfillment establishes a template that reappears again in later moments of transition, and then intensifies as history narrows toward its final convergence (our future).

So Christi’s instructions such as “do not go back,” “do not linger,” and “flee” are embedded response codes, given precisely because the pattern they correspond to will emerge more than once. The first-century destruction of Jerusalem provides the initial fulfillment, where those who recognized the signs and acted quickly were preserved, while those who hesitated were caught in the collapse.

This historical moment becomes the prototype.

From this point forward, the same structure repeats whenever a system reaches its point of desecration and destabilization.

This pattern unfolds in recognizable stages:

• First, there is the intrusion of something profane into what was meant to remain ordered under God.
• Second, there is a period where the system still appears outwardly functional, even as its core has been compromised.
• Third, there is a narrowing window where discernment is possible and movement is still available.
• And finally, there is a rapid shift into exposure, collapse, or irreversible transformation.

“End times” language, in this sense, does’t merely describe the final end of all things but the end of specific orders, systems, or ages.

Each “end” carries the same underlying signature, and the instructions attached to it remain consistent because the human tendency to delay, rationalize (normalcy bias), or cling to stability also remains consistent.

Jesus’ command to not return, not linger, and flee reflects an understanding that once the pattern reaches a critical threshold, continued participation in the compromised system is no longer neutral. It becomes entanglement with the beast frequency itself.

As these patterned endings accumulate across history, they begin to converge and compress. So what was once confined to a single place now stretches across regions, then across nations, and now across the systems that organize daily life itself, becoming diffused into the very frameworks we now depend on, shaping our movement, provision, identity, and participation all at once.

This is now unfolding again in a decisive way, as we reach, what I believe is the end of the age.

“When you see all these things, know that it is near—at the doors!”

-Matthew 24:33

Jesus laid out the sequence so it could be clear for us: intrusion leads to desecration, desecration leads to deception, deception leads to pressure, and pressure forces us to make a loyalty decision.

It is this exact pattern that is now surfacing across multiple domains at the same time right now, creating overlapping points of pressure and exposure for people across the earth, as economic systems, social structures, governance models, and communication networks all reach moments where what is truly driving them is being revealed, whether they are aligned with God’s order or work according to the principles of the kingdom of this world.

Remember, the Book of Revelation is ultimately about the revealing of all things.

Okay, so this means that Matthew 24 isn’t just something to study as a future scenario, it is becoming a present-tense reality. The signal Jesus described is appearing in parallel across different areas of our modern life right now, and with that comes a narrowing window for discernment and response.

Our decisions are no longer isolated nor can they easily be delayed without increasing consequence.

Multiple systems are reaching their tipping points at the same time, converging into a moment that carries the same unchanging call to recognize what is unfolding and respond without hesitation.

The Holy Place

Now, the key to clearly understanding the abomination of desolation is to trace what happens to the idea of the “holy place.” Under the old covenant, it was a building. It was geographic and physical. But, with the coming of Jesus, that entire paradigm shifted at the level of reality itself! The dwelling place of God was no longer fixed in stone, but reconstituted within living vessels. It became embodied, relational, and communal all at once. The locus of His Holy presence moved from a structure to a people, from a location to a living field of indwelling!

Meaning… you, we are the house of God!

God’s presence is held, expressed, and multiplied through those who belong to Him. The “church” is no longer something external that one attends, but a living reality that we inhabit and become. The Kingdom is inside of us! (The apostles speak again and again about this reality: that believers themselves are now the temple, that the Spirit dwells within, that the people of God together form a living structure.)

Now, if the holy place isn’t just a building but a people, then the “abomination” is no longer limited to a statue in a temple. It becomes anything that tries to take up residence in that sacred space and reshape it according to a different order. It can happen inside a person through thoughts, loyalties, and patterns that slowly displace what is true, and it can also happen at the level of entire systems, where the structures that organize our lives start to occupy a place of authority that belongs to God alone.

This pattern becomes visible when external systems begin to press into the most basic layers of our identity, access to the things we need for life, as well as our physical bodies.

It can look like digital identity frameworks that become required gateways for buying, traveling, working, or existing in public life, effectively turning participation itself into something granted or withheld by a centralized system (thank you COVID for giving us a preview of this).

It can look like vaccines or technological interventions that are tied to social permission, where our compliance becomes the price of inclusion, or like biometric tracking, implanted or wearable technologies, or data-linked profiles that begin to define who a person is in functional terms, reducing their identity to something scanned and verified.

And it can look like economic systems that restrict our access to money or resources unless a person aligns with certain conditions, making provision dependent on our adherence to the kingdom of this world.

In each case, the physical form is different, but the pattern is the same:. Something external begins to occupy the space of identity, authority, and permission that was only meant to be governed by God.

The “holy place” now reaches into every layer where life is ordered, including how we live, relate, are governed, and how identity is defined.

As the systems around us become more invasive and embedded in our daily functions, even through simple mechanisms like age verification, logins, and identity checks, they begin to control our access to basic participation… this level of integration creates an opening where something external can shift from serving life to (at the flip of a switch) defining it, gradually taking authority over our identity, permission to participate in society, and our belonging in spaces that were never meant to be governed by a machine.

So in this more textured sense, the “abomination” is what happens when something that doesn’t carry God’s order starts to feel completely normal in our every day lives, even necessary (even good!) while quietly replacing what was always meant to be there, a real, living dependence on our Creator.

This frequency of abomination doesn’t show up looking obviously wrong. More likely it will come dressed as efficiency, convenience, or progress. It solves problems and makes life easier. And that is exactly why our discernment matters so much right now, because the shift is subtle, and it happens right at the level of what we really trust and rely on.

The Abomination of desolation is a repeating signal.

There will come a point where that signal intensifies and the window to resist/refuse begins to close, and where staying in your comfort zone becomes participation in what is unfolding. In this moment, the instruction is immediate and clear: do not go back. Do not assume you have more time. Do not trust what still appears stable, because the shift has already happened beneath the surface.

By the time the abomination is visible to the many, the system around it is already deeply compromised, and collapse is already underway.

The abomination marks the shift from what still feels like intensified normal life to the moment when the line is unmistakably drawn, and each person is revealed by where they stand and which kingdom they truly align with. It shows who is discerning the times, and who is willing to change gears when it matters. Some will recognize the pattern and step out, and in doing so find themselves hidden by grace and aligned. Others will linger… just waiting a little bit longer, still settling for what feels familiar… only to become so deeply entangled in collapse that refusal eventually feels impossible.

When Jesus says to flee to the mountains, He isn’t only giving a geographic instruction for his disciples in first-century Judea. He’s revealing a pattern of response.

There are times when the faithful must move away from what is collapsing or corrupted and toward what is still aligned, even if it less established, or less comfortable, or feels too risky, or scares the pants off of us.

God is inviting us deeper.

As our global systems tighten, merge, and come under increased strain, the pull will be to stay in your usual lane, to adjust, to tell yourself it will pass just like it did with COVID (a reflex shaped by normalcy bias and the comfort of the familiar).

These emerging requirements from the system will often feel frustrating but still be somewhat workable, even necessary, sometimes like the only option left. But, the question is what is being stolen from you spiritually, even as you comply physically?

Do the demands of the machine begin to take authority over your identity, decisions, provision, or movement in ways it did not before? Does it start setting the terms of your life, subtly shifting what you rely on and who you obey, until God is no longer at the center?

When this shift happens, a line has been crossed, and our response must be a courageous no. Not for me and my house.

Jesus doesn’t paint the illusion that everything will remain stable enough during times of upheaval to navigate life slowly on our terms.

He cuts through that entirely.

Don’t linger. Do not go back! Do not assume stability.

What this ultimately means is that the “abomination of desolation” is a pattern to recognize as it forms in real time around us. It’s a spiritually discerned shift in seasons when the systems aroud you begin to accelerate and press into the deepest layers of your life, reaching toward your biology, your identity, and the very image of God within you, seeking to redefine who you are and what you are “allowed” to have.

It has already happened in history in a very real way, and it continues to manifest wherever the dwelling place of God, now carried in people and in the structures that shape their lives, is threatened by something foreign taking its place.

We are entering a time where keeping your temple in order, and holding it clear, steady, and aligned in the Kingdom, will be required of you at a level that can no longer be postponed or outsourced. This isn’t about distant events or future movements on a physical temple mount. The end of the age is personal and intimate… revealing each one of us and who we really trust. This is about your life, your body, your decisions, and your allegiance, now and in the days to come.

What you allow, who you align with, and the things you refuse will carry real consequence in the days to come, pressing beyond the comfort we have grown used to navigating in our soft little western lives. It will require a clarity and resolve that cannot be sustained by our past habits or our lust for ease. It will require real trust in the One who said He would provide when we put the Kingdom first.

This is the new math:

Alignment with God’s order + obedience in real time + trust in His provision + willingness to release false security = clarity, provision, and preservation in the convergence

The critical shift in this equation is that provision is no longer secured first and then followed by obedience. In the Kingdom, it moves in the opposite direction.

Alignment comes first.

Obedience follows.

Trust anchors it.

And provision meets you there.

But, what makes this difficult in practice is the subtraction. The removal of our dependence on systems that once felt familiar and stable. Safety, as it has been commonly understood, cannot be the controlling variable anymore.

If safety remains our priority, obedience will always be delayed.

So the “new math” is not actually new. It’s a return to our design:

Seek first the Kingdom, trust the King, obey when it costs, and allow His provision to meet you on the other side of alignment.

As the days ahead feel more uncertain than ever, there is something deeply steadying about returning to the rhythm that speaks to our original design. Which means that these small, intentional moments that we gather as a family to remember can help anchor us again in His faithfulness.

Leviticus 23:2
“Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘The feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My appointed times.’”

For many families who feel drawn to revisit what Scripture calls God’s appointed times, it can feel unfamiliar at first, even a little overwhelming. Often, it has only been seen through the lens of traditional Jewish practice or as something distant in history that seems, well, a little weird… But what we are stepping into is something much simpler and deeper, which isn’t about taking on another culture’s customs in a formal or exact way, but returning to something more foundational, that belongs to the rhythm God set in place long ago…

These appointed times weren’t meant to be obligations or big, commercial events attached to lots of social obligations and stressful hosting. They were intended to be anchors in time, gentle invitations to stop, remember, and realign ourselves with the truer reality that exists all around us. So, in this sense, they are part of the fabric of the Kingdom itself! There is no external pressure to celebrate in a certain way, pull together something complicated, or have special decorations, etc. These “feasts” are much quieter than that… they simply call families back to the table, to the real story we find ourselves in, back to gratitude, and back to the steady recognition of God’s provision and faithfulness even (and especially) in times of deep wilderness.

Exodus 12:14
“This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.”

This week, rather than trying to do something elaborate or perfectly structured with our kids (we tried this once years ago—did not go well), our focus is simply on being together. It’s enough to eat our meal, read aloud the story, taste a few symbolic foods, and walk through the story in a way that our children can understand and participate in.

I have been working on a small read-along PDF for my own family that we will be using as we move through Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits… the spring feasts of God’s Kingdom. I thought I’d share it with you if you’re interested.

I’m just sharing it here in case you would like to move through it over the course of the week as well. It meant to be something that can be picked up in the evening or woven into your dinner time without any pressure. Alongside that, even a very simple Seder meal has the power to draw the story of the great Exodus out of the pages of Scripture and into our own kitchens…

What can seem so distant all of a sudden becomes present; the leaving behind of a dominant, oppressive culture is no longer just something that happened long ago, but something that can be felt and understood in a real way again today. As the food is tasted and the story is told, it moves from something we hear only, into something we experience together, settling deeper into the memory of us and our children.

The heart of God’s feasts is in the remembering.

Because, when we lose sight of who we are and where we’ve come from, we can begin to drift (sadly, often without even noticing) into a life that no longer lines up with the deeper story God is telling through humanity and His world—and you!

His appointed times call us back.

They root us.

And ground us again in the soil of His perfect provision.

They place us again within His rhythm, as an invitation to remember where history started and where we are going within it. So, as we mark these moments, the pulse of the Kingdom is restored in us. Which means that we are centered again in the memory of His real and present goodness, and from that place, we are better able to walk into the days ahead with greater clarity, trust, and a sense of belonging to the God who saves.

Luke 22:19
“And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’”

We are remembering how God led His people, how He provided for the, and how He made a way where there was none. We are remembering that He is always the same, and when we gather our family like this, our home becomes aligned with the Kingdom once again!

Download my Free Passover Seder Mealtime Read Aloud here.

“Behold, He [Jesus] is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him” (1:7).

This verse is often read metaphorically by people trying to harmonize it with modern cosmological assumptions. I’ve heard some Christians suggest that this prophecy will be fulfilled through technology… that everyone will see Christ’s return because it will be broadcast online, through phones and screens across the world. But this interpretation reduces a defining cosmic event onto a digital spectacle… can you imagine the blue glow on everyone’s faces as they watch Jesus descending from “outer space”?

Every eye will see Him.

I think this is a prophetic guarantee.

The King is returning for His Kingdom. He came the first time in humility, but all Scripture points to his second coming as a magnificent, unprecidented Royal return.

Now, to understand how such an event is not only possible, but inevitable, let’s revisit the very architecture of the world we live in, the nature of the earth we stand on. Because I believe that the framework we’ve been given about the world (the globe, the spinning ball, the infinite vacuum of space) is itself part of the deception designed to dull our eschatological expectations.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

This opening line of Genesis is immediately about structure… the ordering of realms, dimensions, and boundaries.

Biblical cosmology is the spiritual architecture of the created world as expressed in God’s own Word. (Let’s just note right here that there is nothing in the Bible that would even hint a spinning ball circling the sun. So for those who feel strongly about taking God at his word, this is a good place to lock in.)

Biblical cosmology is a central key that governs our understanding of who we are, where we are, and what story we are truly living in.

In the days to come, as the convergence of the ages tightens and reality is redefined before our very eyes, understanding the terrain of creation will become much more than an intellectual curiosity, it will support our spiritual survival. Because when the visible realm begins to shake, only those who understand the invisible scaffolding will know how to respond properly.

When portals open, geography shifts, and ancient powers reemerge masked in modern skin, we will need to know how to navigate these wilds with discernment.

The cosmology we believe will either anchor us to the truth or leave us disoriented in fear.

From our earliest days in school, we were conditioned to accept that earth is a rotating sphere hurtling through a limitless universe. This story is told with authority and reinforced by CGI images from NASA, science fiction narratives, Hollywood, and a steady stream of educational programming that leaves no room for inquiry about many obivious, observable things that at least create question marks. To question the globe is to be utterly mocked by the religion of Scientism. And yet… why such fervor to defend it, do you think?

Some examples of where the globe theory falls short:

1. The Absence of Observable Curvature

One of the most obvious physical inconsistencies with the globe model is the lack of observable curvature over long distances. According to the standard model, earth curves approximately 8 inches per mile squared. That means that over 10 miles, the drop should be about 66 feet.

And yet, in real-world observation distant objects such as cities, mountains, or oil rigs are often visible well beyond the expected curvature limits. Modern zoom lenses can recover objects supposedly hidden behind curvature. Engineers designing railroads, canals, and long bridges historically operated under flat design parameters.

While atmospheric lensing (“refraction”) is often cited as an explanation, it isn’t consistently predictive. The lack of repeatable curvature evidence in lived space remains a clear point of tension.

2. No Measurable Movement

Mainstream science tells us that the earth spins at 1,038 mph at the equator, earth orbits the sun at 67,000 mph, and the solar system moves through the galaxy at 500,000 mph —oh my!

Yet in over 400 years of experimentation, no direct mechanical measurement has ever definitively detected the earth’s movement.

From a Kingdom cosmology standpoint, the absence of measurable spin affirms an anchored earth, one rooted in God’s own design. As Psalm 104:5 declares, “He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved,” establishing a world that is fixed.

From a Biblical framework, the movements we observe in the heavens, the rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the moon, and the shifting constellations are evidence of the lights above moving in ordered paths above us. Genesis 1:14 supports this directly: “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.’” Here, the sun, moon, and stars are set in the expanse to serve as calibrated markers—a cosmic clock, if you will— above a stable earth.

3. Vacuum Next to Pressure Without Containment

The current scientific model teaches that the earth’s atmosphere is a system of dense gases under pressure, and sits right next to the vast vacuum of outer space, where there is no pressure at all. But this idea doesn’t line up with how gases behave in real life. According to the natural laws of physics, any gas under pressure will always move toward areas of lower pressure until balance is achieved. In other words, air should not be able to stay attached to the earth if there’s nothing physically stopping it from escaping into the vacuum beyond.

In everyday experience, pressure systems like this always need some kind of boundary. You can’t hold compressed air in a tire or a tank without a sealed container. High pressure sitting next to zero pressure without a dividing barrier is simply not how gases behave. So, if space is truly a vacuum, and Earth is spinning and moving through it at immense speeds, it makes no physical sense for the atmosphere to cling to it without dispersing. There must be something containing it… something holding the pressure in.

This is exactly what the Bible describes when it speaks of the firmament.

In Genesis 1:6–8, God declares, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” From a Kingdom perspective this firmament is an actual structural feature of our enclosed earth, something dimensional and real, designed to separate realms and contain God’s creation. It’s the answer to the “confounding problem” that modern physics cannot account for: how our atmosphere is held in place!

This understanding matters deeply because it affirms that creation is governed by layers, boundaries, and divine intent. The firmament reveals that the heavens and the earth are not separate entities drifting in an infinite void, but connected realms divided for holy purposes.

(If you want to do more deep dives on the topic of where the globe model fails, definitely check out Gregory Lessing Garret’s fantastic Substack.)

Why This Matters in Kingdom Terms

If the earth isn’t as it has been described by institutional science, then we aren’t simply talking about a disagreement over technical models. We are confronting something far more profound: a theological divide that reaches into the very architecture of creation. This is about the integrity of God’s revealed order versus the constructed frameworks of a world that has removed Him from its cosmology.

The nature of this deception redefines our understanding of the terrain over which God rules, reshapes the context in which humanity understands itself, and obscures the setting into which the King will return.

If Scripture’s description of the firmament, the waters above, and the pillars of the earth are real, intended as the true divine architecture of the eart, then the erasure of these truths through modern cosmology is another layer of a long war to veil the created order, so that people might forget their place in it, and forget who designed it and rules it.

The enemy’s modern obsession with space exploration, particle acceleration, artificial intelligence, and the building of digital heavens becomes another counterfeit kingdom. The pursuit of quantum gateways and dimensional breaches is an attempt to storm energetic and spiritual gates that God Himself has sealed. The spirit of the tower of Babel is rising again and humanity is once again reaching into the heavens (but this time with rockets and synthetic wisdom) seeking to overthrow boundaries that were placed there for our protection.

What if the world-system is hiding knowledge of the true nature of earth’s enclosure?

What if the reason “every eye will see Him” is because this world is not a spinning ball, but rather a fixed, enclosed realm, a “nested earth”, where dimensions converge at the center and the dome itself functions as the veil between heaven and earth?

The return of Christ will be a rupture of dimensions, a tearing of the veil, an invasion of eternity into time. And, I believe that it will be unmissable to every human, because of the structure of the world itself.

The Nested Earth

The modern cosmological narrative, crafted largely by secular astrophysics, institutional science (the religion of “scientism”) and NASA, presents a cold, expanding void, where earth spins as a random rock in an endless ocean of stars; it is a framework of separation, emptiness, and insignificance.

This worldview births nihilism, and implies that God is far from us.

The biblical narrative, by contrast, presents a world intentionally nested in layers, dimensionally ordered, and teeming with intelligent design. Earth is central to the human story, and God is fully present and invested in this project that contains the Love Story of the ages.

When we return to Genesis with Spirit-aligned eyes, cleansed of Babylon’s conditioning through education, entertainment, and culture, we enouncter a world fashioned in divine layers: the heavens above, the firmament between, and the earth below. The Hebrew term “raqia,” translated as firmament, suggests an expanse, a hammered-out canopy separating waters above from waters below. It is dimensional and structural, implying containment. We are not flung into space; we are held within it!

Throughout the Bible, the earth is described as a stationary plane, enclosed by a firmament, and set upon pillars. These are the building blocks of God’s creation language.

• Isaiah 40:22 – “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers…” (“Circle” in Hebrew is “chug,” meaning a flat disc, not a sphere.)
• Job 38:4–6 – “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?… On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone?”
• 1 Chronicles 16:30 – “The world is established; it shall never be moved.”
• Psalm 104:5 – “He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.”
• Amos 9:6 – “Who builds His upper chambers in the heavens and has founded His vault upon the earth…”

The consistent testimony of Scripture is that earth is a fixed and enclosed system! The stars are lights placed in the firmament (Genesis 1:14–17). Heaven is above it. And beneath it all is the great deep. This structure makes sense of Jesus’ visible return in a way the globe cannot.

The nested structure of earth means there are regions and realms hidden from the dominant lens of secular geography.

To say the earth is nested means that creation unfolds in layers… spatially, dimensionally, and hierarchically. Just as a seed contains layers of life within it, or a temple is built with outer courts, inner chambers, and a holy of holies, so too is the earth structured with regions within regions, realms within realms, and boundaries set by God. These are metaphysical and geographical, though often inaccessible or cloaked in certain epochs, like now.

Language like “the heavens,” “the earth,” and “under the earth” appear throughout Scripture (Phil. 2:10, Rev. 5:3), because God’s creation is tiered, not flat. Even in Eden, there was a garden within the earth, planted by God, distinct from the wild lands beyond. Later, in Ezekiel’s visions, we see heavenly thrones appearing above platforms of crystal. In Revelation, John is told to “come up here,” and is shown doors, thrones, and cities as actual realms!

This matters in the end times because as the veil thins, I believe that these hidden layers will begin to intersect with our 3D reality again.

We are about to enter what most would call fantasy…

Scripture tells us that in the days to come the kings imprisoned in deep realms will emerge. A dragon is cast down to Earth, which means there is a “down” that exists spiritually and structurally. And the nations will mourn because the architecture of their familiar reality is being rearranged before their eyes, and they’re not prepared for it.

Modern secular geography convinces the collective that we’ve mapped everything. But Kingdom cosmology says otherwise… Ancient peoples spoke of lands beyond the ice, cities beneath the ground, and realms beneath mountains and oceans. I believe these stories were much more than myths. Perhaps they were remembering a world before Babel, when the earth’s regions were not sealed off, and when humanity could still access what we’ve long since been cut off from.

There are most likely still sealed regions, guarded by angels or kept hidden until the appointed time. Isaiah 24:21 hints at God punishing “the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth,” and that “they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison.” This is dimensional judgment in a layered world.

If we believe the earth is spinning through an empty universe we won’t know how to frame the kind of revelation that is coming. We won’t believe that entities can be released from the deep, or that heavenly beings could descend from above…. we’ll end up spiritualizing what is about to unfold in real, tangible, dimensional space right it front of us. And we won’t prepare our households for the day when reality breaks wide open to expose the unbelievable distortions that have comprehensively blinded humanity for generations.

The Kingdom of God isn’t just coming to earth, it’s coming through it, in layers.

A nested Earth reveals that our geography, too, is prophetic.

Our world is more layered than we assume. It isn’t flat nor a spinning globe , but is concentric, dimensional, and alive.

So, why does this matter in the end times?

Because the deception that is already unfolding relies heavily on a false map of reality. The enemy does not just lie about morality; he lies about everything, including the stage we are on. If you do not know the structure of the world, you cannot interpret the signs of the times correctly.

Jesus said there would be signs in the heavens, distress on the earth, and shaking between. If our cosmology has been replaced with secular mythology, then we will misread the signals of the end times convergence.

A nested earth implies there are gates and suggests that the earth is not only physical but spiritual, with thresholds between realms. The ancients knew this. When Jesus was tempted by the devil, He was shown all the kingdoms of the world from a high mountain. That is not possible under the modern model of earth. But in a nested cosmology, where realms can fold into one another (think like the movie Inception), where layers of visibility shift under spiritual permission, it becomes totally possible!

Jesus’ return won’t be a localized event over the middle east, or confined to a single timezone… it will be a dimensional rupture, a rending of the veil between heaven and earth. Just as the veil of the temple was torn at His death, so will the veil that covers the Earth be torn at His return. The heavens will recede like a scroll (Isaiah 34:4, Revelation 6:14). The sky itself will roll back, and the glory of the Lord will be unveiled.

It’ll be like a movie. But not, of course, because I suspect Christ’s frequency will pierce through our mis-alignments, and our bodies with be overcome. We will feel this on an entirely different level than anything we’ve experienced before.

The deception of a vast, heliocentric universe suggests that such a global appearing is logistically impossible, unless, of course, Jesus is livestreamed through satellites. But, the true return will transcend physics as we know them. The dome will be breached, and the King will descend through the firmament, in full view of the whole world.

Babel was a portal, an attempt to access other dimensions. God scattered them because they had unified their knowledge in rebellion of the Divine design. The same spirit is behind modern particle accelerators and quantum tunneling technologies. When men say, “Let us pierce the veil,” they echo the blasphemous ambition of Babel. When CERN pushes into unseen realms, it interferes with gates long sealed by divine decree.

Biblical cosmology matters because it tells us why the ancients built ziggurats, why kings consulted the stars, and why watchers descended in the anceint days. It roots us in spatial truth. This is a world with sacred zones, defiled territories, and places set apart for judgment. Every layer of this earth is crying out for justice.

As the end nears, we will see the resurrection of ancient knowledge. Not all of it is evil, of course, some is Kingdom revelation (scrolls unsealed, mysteries long hidden now brought to light). But much will be counterfeit. The reemergence of Nephilim bloodlines, the return of high craft masquerading as alien technology, the unlocking of hybrid sciences and digital possession… all of it finds legitimacy in a worldview where the earth is a random sphere. But in a nested earth, where boundaries are sacred and creation is under covenant, such things are exposed for what they are: violations.

Land is not neutral, geography is theological code, and the true maps that have been hidden from us tell stories deeper than our hearts might feel ready for.

But, understand this: your place on this earth is holds meaning.

You live within a designed enclosure, beneath a structured heaven, above a chambered deep. The sun and moon are ordained timekeepers, and the stars are watchers in service to God’s seasons.

Everything has meaning.

In the final days, the deception will be geographic, historic, genetic, and dimensional. Only those grounded in the truth of God’s design will endure, because the shedding of the illusion will just be too much for most people. They need their collective Empire-endorsed stories. But, only the nested earth is the fitting context for the return of Christ described in the Bible.

Therefore, we must reject cosmologies that deny the Divine earth-realm design and forsake narratives that frame earth as incidental. Let’s ask ourselves, why has the globe model been pushed so aggressively? Why does NASA require $60 million per day in taxpayer funding? Why is it verboten to question a theory when science is supposed to welcome skepticism?

Because to challenge the globe is to challenge everything, including evolution, atheism, the Big Bang, aliens, Elon Musk (haha), and the entire framework of secular cosmology.

And even more significantly, to question the globe is to reawaken the spiritual topology of reality, to realize that we are not floating in meaningless space, but are living in a holy, designed, enclosed space, where the Creator sees, governs, and will return to His creation. To see rightly is true power in a time of great deception.

The frequency of eternity will manifest within the visible world when Jesus returns. This is the end of linear time as we know it and the beginning of the New Heaven and the New Earth… the restoration of all things.

This convergence isn’t far off.

And the enemy knows it, which is why the false architecture of space, the disembodied promises of “AI salvation,” and the clouded narratives of modern science exist: to dull our anticipation, rewire our imaginations, and shift our gaze away from a sky that will one day split open.

My Theory

Okay, though I’ve been working on this article for a while, this next part just locked in for me tonight. Like a bolt in my mind I realized the TRUE significance of this…

If the antichrist aims to counterfeit the return of Christ, the most convincing tactic would be a public, dramatic “descent” from the sky, perhaps via advanced aerial tech, holographic mechanisms, or even true spiritual/occult manifestation. But I think it will fall short of the global, dimensional unveiling that Jesus’ return will bring.

Why?

Because the true return is from above the firmament, through an event that restructures reality. Whereas, the false return will be localized but broadcast (what most people will be expecting if they believe in a globe earth, where those on one side of the ball cannot see what’s happening on the other side. Its power will lie in the digital broadcasting of the event, not in a universal unveiling that rolls back the entire sky. The universal unveiling of the true Christ happens AFTER the antichrist “return”…

A Massive “Tell”

This may indeed be one of the great tells of the antichrist, and why many will be deceived, because they are not expecting Jesus to arrive in a way that every eye will actually see him.

If the “arrival” is shown only via screens—televised, livestreamed, VR-ed into every headset—but not actually seen with every eye, then we should ask: why not?

I think it’s because the antichrist can’t pull of a cosmic rupture of the firmament the way the real Christ can… so an amazing show will be put on (I’m guessing over Jerusalem) and it will be broadcast everywhere and it will be so good that even most Christains will believe it.

But, those who understand that the true return of Jesus will collapse the veil over the nested earth will know: this is not my King.

Jesus’ return undoes the architecture of deception, but the antichrist’s arrival depends on it.

This is why cosmology is not a side issue!

The antichrist system stands on false space, false time, and engineered perception, an entire architecture of illusion designed to imitate glory without the truth. But the Kingdom remnant will not bow to a convincing spectacle, no matter how compelling the descent appears. Their discernment will cut through the deception, and while the world worships the counterfeit, they will remain steady, eyes fixed on the heavens, waiting for the unveiling of the true King.

On the surface, Digital ID systems sound reasonable in the light of the ever-evolving technological landscape. They are increasingly marketed as tools for safety, convenience, and streamlined access to the daily stuff of our lives. They promise to replace lost passwords, simplify healthcare and travel, protect our children online, and eliminate fraud… what’s not to love?

But they are fundamentally a shift in how our identity, freedom, and access to life’s essentials are managed and controlled.

You see, God has written a sovereign timeline for Earth’s story, a narrative arc with a beginning, a crescendo, and ultimately… a return. And we are now living in the final chapters of that arc. As this epoch nears its divine threshold, the forces of darkness are intensifying their effort to draw as many souls into deception, bondage, and spiritual compromise as possible before the age concludes.

This is not simply a moral battle; it is a war for allegiance, a clash of kingdoms.

The acceleration we see unfolding in the technocratic systems of the world is deliberate and coordinated. The aim is total spiritual submission to a counterfeit order.

In this effort, the “elite” hands of darkness have chosen technology as their primary net. They believe that by embedding every identity, transaction, belief, and movement into a unified digital grid, they can transcend the limitations of the past and shape human destiny. But what they are framing as evolution is in fact subjugation.

The rise of digital identity is a pillar in a larger spiritual architecture designed to replace trust in God with full dependence on the system. It’s the gateway to a world where participation in society is going to become a conditional privilege. Which means that it will reshape the very definition of consent, autonomy, and human worth.

This shift has been subtle by design.

Because when examined in isolation, digital ID seems harmless, a natural extension of technological progress. But when placed within the meta-story of human history and biblical prophecy, its true nature becomes clear. It is the infrastructure of surveillance repackaged as security, the machinery of control veiled in efficiency.

It is the quiet scaffolding of a beast system… not yet the final mark referred to in the book of Revelation, but it is the onramp. It trains the public to believe that access to life, liberty, and even basic provision must be granted by digital gatekeepers. When every interaction is mediated by a digital identity, when every resource is accessed through a single profile, the transition from digital ID to enforced allegiance becomes essentially inevitable.

What we are witnessing isn’t just technological innovation, it is the construction of a false kingdom. And like every false kingdom, it offers its own promise of peace, provision, and purpose, but without connection, mercy, and Christ. It will mimic the omniscience of God by watching every move. It will mimic omnipresence by being in every home, every device, every transaction., and mimic omnipotence by eventually controlling access to all resources and services.

But it will have none of His love, none of His holiness, and none of His life.

That is why this issue mustn’t be treated as merely political, logistical, or technological. It must be seen as theological. It must be understood within the meta-narrative of redemption and rebellion, covenant and counterfeit, kingdom and empire. The rise of digital ID is a preparatory mechanism for something far more severe. It is a cultural liturgy training people to believe that it is normal—even necessary—to be approved of by Babylon in order to live.

Let’s unpack what this actually means by clearly defining the key components of this system, identifying the dangers, and aritculating the invitation for those who choose not to participate.

1. Digital ID (Individual)

Definition:
A Digital ID is an electronic profile that contains verifiable information about a person, including name, address, date of birth, credentials, and other identifiers. It is used to confirm your identity when accessing services online or in person.

Why it’s a problem:
The danger here is not identity itself, but how your identity is being centralized, tracked, and conditioned for access. A Digital ID is more than a digital driver’s license. It is the seed of a system that can link your online presence, financial behavior, health records, and social activity into one programmable profile. Once this happens, your ability to move through society becomes tied to system-defined permissions.

Opportunity for the non-compliant:
To reject this system is to preserve your organic identity. Families who opt out have the opportunity to reclaim localized trust-based communities, parallel economies, and relationship-based reputation. These networks are slower to form but infinitely more resilient.

2. Centralized Digital ID

Definition:
A Centralized Digital ID refers to a single government- or institution-issued digital identity system that is used across multiple sectors (banking, healthcare, employment, travel, etc.). All data flows into and out of a central hub that authorizes or denies access. This is where Digital ID is rapidly headed.

Why it’s a problem:
Centralization is what makes the system dangerous. When one node controls the gate to all services, your individual autonomy is lost. The centralized ID can be revoked, suspended, or modified without recourse. It creates a unified profile of behavioral data, ripe for surveillance, censorship, and control. In such a system, the infrastructure becomes permission-based rather than rights-based, echoing the social credit model already functioning in places like China, where access to daily life hinges on compliance with government-defined norms. This is not a distant possibility, it is a template already being tested.

Opportunity for the non-compliant:
To resist centralization is to remain human in a system that increasingly treats humans as programmable variables. Remnant families who refuse centralized IDs preserve the ability to opt out, build alternative structures, and model freedom to others when the system begins to show its coercive nature more overtly.

3. Biometric ID

Definition:
A Biometric ID uses your body as the password… fingerprints, facial scans, iris patterns, voice, gait, or even heartbeat. These biological markers are scanned and linked to your digital identity.

Why it’s a problem:
Biometrics cannot be changed. Once captured, your body becomes part of a surveillance network. These systems blur the line between who you are and what you can access, creating a permanent bridge between the physical body and digital control systems. Over time, this will evolve into real-time tracking, predictive analytics, and conditioning through behavioral nudges.

Opportunity for the non-compliant:
Those who reject biometric enrollment protect the integrity of their body as sacred, not scannable. This stance reinforces a theology of the body as a temple. It also sets a boundary against transhumanist convergence, allowing families to remain rooted in a vision of embodied, analog life.

4. The Mark of the Beast

Definition:
In biblical prophecy (Revelation 13), the Mark of the Beast is a system of allegiance, required to buy or sell, and tied to the worship of a counterfeit authority. It is a sign — possibly both spiritual and technological — that aligns a person with the Beast system.

Why it’s a problem:
This is not just about a physical mark or a barcode. It represents a totalizing system of access, economy, and control that demands spiritual allegiance in exchange for participation. It is biological, economic, and spiritual. Its architecture is now visible in the convergence of Digital ID, CBDCs (central bank digital currencies), surveillance, and biometric control, all built to determine who gets to function in the system.

Opportunity for the non-compliant:
Refusing the mark in its final or formative stages is about preserving the sovereignty of the human soul. Those who resist now become forerunners and builders of the age to come. They stand in contrast to the system as witnesses to Christ’s Kingdom.

Digital ID is an ontological problem, because it redefines what it means to be a person, replacing your image-bearing identity with system-managed compliance. It is the infrastructure of a counterfeit kingdom, rising in the name of convenience.

But in resisting it, we recover something ancient and holy: true freedom rooted in covenant.

Digital ID systems are already being implemented globally, framed as tools for “safety”, convenience, and public health, and they are rapidly becoming the gatekeepers to modern life. And while they may not yet require allegiance to a global system, that moment is fast approaching. So, eventually, what is being promoted as a tool will evolve into a test of our consent.

While I’m speaking often about these topics lately, it’s not because I enjoy it, or because I take any pleasure in focusing on heavy or uncomfortable realities. I’m doing it because I feel an urgency in my bones, a clear and pressing sense that I must speak to those who, like me, are unwilling to surrender to the energetic beast system that is being prepared to sever us from both our sovereignty and our Creator.

I offer this list for those who have resolved not to comply with a centralized digital ID in the days ahead. My purpose here is to help activate your imagination and begin discerning practical strategies for resilience, especially in the areas that most directly affect your family.

Honestly, what we face is sobering. Choosing not to comply will dramatically reshape nearly every part of how we live. But that clarity is also a gift, because when we can see what is coming, we can begin to prepare rather than be swept along by a system whose goal is to trap humanity in a digital prison of compliance.

Obviously, this is a new threshold for all of us. Humanity has never walked this road before. That’s why it is essential that we not lock into fear or panic, but take small steps forward as we can, prepare our hearts, and stay grounded in trust. I believe that God looks after His children. He will lead those who align with truth step by step. There will be unusual provision, bridges of guidance, and even, I strongly suspect, miracles for those who choose to walk outside the system of control. 

Use this list to envision your life without access to each domain, and then begin asking yourself, How can we live simply, and resiliently outside the system?

42 Everyday Areas Likely to Require Digital ID (Within 3–5 Years)

1. Opening or accessing your bank account
2. Receiving your paycheck or work/government benefits
3. Using central bank digital currency or accessing crypto
4. Paying taxes or accessing tax records
5. Applying for any type of job
6. Receiving government-issued documents (passport, license, etc)
7. Filing for unemployment or social services
8. Accessing health insurance 
9. Booking or attending medical appointments
10. Buying prescription medications
11. Accessing emergency rooms or hospitals
12. Using public transportation (bus, train, subway)
13. Booking flights or crossing borders
14. Checking into hotels or rentals
15. Buying or renting a home
16. Registering children for school (attending school)
17. Taking standardized tests or professional exams
18. Accessing university or continuing education
19. Driving or renewing your driver’s license
20. Registering or renewing a vehicle
21. Obtaining auto or home insurance
22. Using digital wallets or apps like Venmo, PayPal
23. Making purchases above a set threshold
24. Receiving packages or verifying delivery
25. Logging into social media platforms
26. Logging into email or messaging apps
27. Donating to churches, ministries, or causes
28. Paying for household utilities
29. Shopping during an energy or food rationing season
30. Applying for building permits or land use
31. Buying seeds, tools, or agricultural supplies
32. Attending large events, concerts or conferences
33. Accessing libraries, skating rinks, community centres
34. Visiting nursing homes or long-term care
35. Making online purchases from major retailers
36. Using software or operating systems
37. Downloading or updating apps
38. Watching certain media or accessing video platforms
39. Accessing physical safety during declared emergencies
40. Filing legal claims or interacting with courts
41. Buying tools, generators, or certain tech equipment
42. Traveling freely within your own country

This list is a good place to begin our brainstorming:

• What can we begin to disentangle from now?
• Where is my family most vulnerable to dependency?
• How can we lessen our digital footprint/dependence? 
• What daily comforts might be leveraged for control?
• If we can no longer officially work, what skills could we exchange with others?
• Who around me is also sensing the need to prepare? Who can we build community with?
• What simple home rhythms can we begin to establish that we anchor us in the days to come?

Our goal is to root deeply into God’s provision over our lives, reclaim our agency, and begin walking in wisdom now, while there is still time to reposition.

The Back Story

The modern rapture doctrine emerged in the 19th century, articulated by John Nelson Darby, a leading voice in the Plymouth Brethren movement. He developed a framework known as dispensationalism, which divided history into distinct eras (or “dispensations”) of God’s interaction with humanity. Central to this view was the idea of a pre-tribulation rapture: a sudden, supernatural removal of believers before a time of global upheaval and judgment.

Interestingly, the earliest catalyst for this teaching was a teenage Scottish girl named Margaret MacDonald, who in 1830 claimed to have received a visionary dream during a revivalist meeting. In her vision, she described a supernatural removal of the faithful prior to a time of trial. Her account sparked theological curiosity within charismatic and Brethren circles and Darby later adopted elements of her vision and gave them “doctrinal structure”, helping transform her spontaneous personal experience into a broader eschatological position.

Note: Eschatology is the study of the “last things”, including the return of Jesus, final judgment, resurrection, and the eternal destiny of humanity.

But the real turning point in the spread of rapture theology came a bit later through publishing. In 1909, the Scofield Reference Bible was released. Edited by Cyrus I. Scofield (a controversial figure with connections to elite New York social and political networks) the Scofield Bible embedded Darby’s dispensational framework directly into the biblical text through footnotes, cross-references, and timelines.

While Bible commentaries are common today, the Scofield Reference Bible was the first of its kind to place commentary and Scripture side by side on the same page, giving Scofield’s theological interpretations the subtle appearance of biblical authority rather than personal opinion.

There are also some interesting circumstantial connections between the Scofield Reference Bible and the Rockefeller family (hmm… where have we seen them before? They dabble in everything!) During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several wealthy industrialists, including those within the Rockefeller circle, were known to support Christian Zionist efforts, which aligned with a growing theological movement promoting the return of the Jewish people to Palestine as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. This movement was religious and political, and served the interests of global powers who saw a strategic advantage in establishing a Western-aligned presence in the Middle East.

The agenda of Christian Zionism, especially as popularized through tools like the Scofield Bible, often focuses on a prophetic timeline that includes the physical restoration of Israel, a future Third Temple, and an imminent rapture. While this view uses Scripture to frame geopolitical developments, it can subtly reduce God’s covenantal purposes to political outcomes, focusing more on land and events than on the transformation of hearts. (It also tends to promote unquestioning political support for modern day Israel, at the expense of justice, peacemaking, and the global, inclusive nature of God’s Kingdom.)

In contrast, God’s real design isn’t about political Zionism, but Kingdom fulfillment—a spiritual house built on Christ, made up of living stones from every tribe, tongue, and nation. The true inheritance isn’t a plot of land, but a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells. God’s heart has always been for all people, both Jew and Gentile, to be reconciled in one new humanity through Christ.

So while history shows that theological and financial forces shaped certain modern doctrines (often with earthly agendas in mind) the true storyline of Scripture is the restoration of all things in Christ… not the promotion of empires, borders, or national pride.

The early Church knew nothing of a secret escape before tribulation. The words of Christ in Matthew 24, and the consistent testimony of Revelation, also point to a faithful remnant who overcomes through endurance.

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven… Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven… And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

—Matthew 24:29–31

“But he who endures to the end shall be saved.”

—Matthew 24:13

The widespread acceptance of the rapture doctrine in the West has been shaped more by publishing influence, theological novelty, political convenience, and psychological fear than by fidelity to apostolic teaching.

In our time, this belief functions as a seductive, yet soothing placeholder, offering the comfort of escape while muting our discernment. It lulls many into passivity, distracting them from the very real structures of end-time control now materializing around them, and delaying the courageous, grounded preparation these times require of us. There is so much to do to prepare!

The early church, the apostolic writings, and the teachings of Jesus Himself speak consistently of perseverance, endurance, and visible witness through trial, not escape from it.

The pre-tribulation rapture is not found in Scripture as a coherent or consistently supported doctrine, and its popularization owes more to cultural escapism and speculative theology than to the Kingdom truth revealed in Scripture.

One of the key texts often used to support the rapture idea is Matthew 24:40-41:

“Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left.”

At first glance, this might seem to describe a sudden removal of believers. (Didn’t you love that soulful song that DC Talk revived back in the day?) But the context clarifies something else entirely!

Just a few verses earlier in Matthew 24, Jesus offers a critical interpretive key to the rest of His teaching. He says, “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man… the flood came and took them all away”. This is an unmistakable reference point. In the story of Noah, the ones “taken” were not the faithful, but the unrepentant. They were swept away by judgment, removed from the earth through destruction. It was Noah and his family (the righteous) who remained, preserved through obedience and covenant alignment.

This context matters deeply, because just after referencing Noah, Jesus uses the same language again: “Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.” Many have interpreted this as a picture of the rapture, assuming the one “taken” is rescued. But consistent with the previous verses, the one taken is removed in judgment, not caught up in reward. The one left is the one who endures.

Luke’s Gospel confirms this.

In the parallel passage (Luke 17:34–37), when Jesus describes some being “taken,” the disciples immediately ask him, “Where, Lord?” And Jesus replies, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather…” This is a vivid and unsettling image, but a clear one.. He is speaking of those removed to judgment. So this verse is actually a sobering warning.

Throughout Scripture, the consistent pattern is that those who are aligned with God’s ways are the ones who remain, while those living in distortion or opposition to truth are the ones who are removed. Proverbs 10:30 says, “The righteous will never be removed, but the wicked will not inhabit the earth,” and in Psalm 37, those who wait with trust and humility are promised the inheritance of the land, while those out of alignment are “cut off.”

Jesus affirms this in the parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13:30), where He instructs the reapers to first gather the tares, those not rooted in truth, for removal. This directly challenges the popular rapture doctrine, which reverses the pattern by suggesting that those in alignment are the ones taken away, while the rest are left behind.

Even the Greek words used in Matthew 24 reinforce this: the word for “taken” (paralambanō) can carry a negative meaning (as when Satan “took” Jesus to tempt Him), while “left” (aphiēmi) can imply being safely kept or released in peace. When viewed in context and through the consistent pattern of God’s restorative design, it becomes clear that the “taken” in Matthew 24 refers to those removed in judgment or deception, while those who remain are the ones who endure, stay aligned, and inherit what God has prepared.

Psalm 37 declares, “The wicked will be cut off… but the meek shall inherit the earth.”

In light of this, the common modern interpretation of “being taken” as a rapture event is not only exegetically unsound, but, I believe, deeply misleading. It reverses the meaning of Jesus’ words and dulls the call to perseverance and faithful endurance that runs through the entire New Testament. Rather than preparing Jesus followers to stand in the midst of shaking, the rapture view teaches them to await a tidy escape, and in doing so, makes them vulnerable to deception when the real testing comes.

The Plot Twist

While Scripture doesn’t teach a pre-tribulation rapture, the idea of a mass disappearance has been deeply seeded into the collective imagination of the Western Church. For over a century, countless books, films, and teachings have dramatized the moment when “the righteous vanish” and chaos follows. This expectation has conditioned much of the Church to anticipate a sudden, “blink‑of‑an‑eye” evacuation from the world.

But what if this anticipation itself becomes a tool of deception?

Here’s where it gets twisty: the enemy isn’t just evil, he is also highly intelligent, strategic, and deeply invested in mimicry. He does not create, he counterfeits, and his primary method is through manipulation of perception. Just as Pharaoh’s magicians replicated Moses’ signs, and just as the false prophet in Revelation calls down fire from heaven in imitation of divine power (Revelation 13:13), the adversary seeks to manufacture convincing imitations of God’s promises to lure people into false alignment.

In this light, it isn’t difficult to imagine how, in the coming time of great deception, the antichrist system could engineer a false, global “rapture-like” event to validate its authority. Jesus warned that many would be deceived, even some of the elect if possible (Matthew 24:24), and that the final days would be marked by lying signs, wonders, and false interpretations of supernatural events. Whether through advanced holographic projections (Project Blue Beam), frequency-based mind manipulation, or even staged disappearances through hidden technologies, the real danger would be the interpretation.

A manipulated event could be broadcast as a divine evacuation or ascension, leading many to believe the false narrative that those “taken” were saved, while in truth, it may serve to usher in loyalty to the beast, mock the return of Christ, and further harden hearts to the truth. This is why discernment is critical in order to rightly interpret what it means in light of God’s Word and Kingdom patterns.

If millions were to suddenly vanish, how many believers, conditioned by decades of rapture theology, would interpret such an event as divine rescue? The emotional devastation among the faithful who “remain” could be profound. Convinced they were left behind, many would spiral into despair, questioning their worthiness, their salvation, or even the character of God Himself.

You see, the rapture doctrine presents a theological vulnerability that could be exploited by a global agenda eager to define reality on its terms.

In this theoretical “rapture deception” the disappearance might signal a psychological and spiritual operation designed to influence allegiance. It may function as a pretext to tighten global control, or as a false validation of an emerging leader’s “divine authority.” Those who remain and refuse to participate in the new order would be painted as threats to this global peace, which would fulfill the prophecy of 2 Thessalonians 2:11, where Paul says that God allows a strong delusion to come upon those who “refused to love the truth.”

Jesus didn’t say, “Blessed are those who escape.” He said, “The one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13). Revelation says the same thing: “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus” (Revelation 14:12).

The true remnant is not defined by being whisked away, but by their unwavering presence on the earth that Christ is planning to restore. They are the ones who remain rooted, clothed in light, holding their ground as the systems of the world unravel around them.

This is why discernment matters so deeply now, because misunderstanding the story can lead to misalignment in the field.

Caught Up

Okay, now another one of the most widely used passages in regards to the rapture, is 1 Thessalonians 4:17, which speaks of believers being “caught up… to meet the Lord in the air.” The Greek word apantēsis, translated as “meet” in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, refers to the ancient custom of a welcoming delegation… citizens going out to greet a visiting king and then escorting him back into the city in honor. The image isn’t one of absolute removal, but of a royal procession, where the faithful rise to welcome Jesus and accompany Him as He returns to reign on the earth.

Scripture isn’t describing the evacuation of the faithful while the world collapses. It’s describing the return of Christ to reign as King over a renewed earth, with His people gathered to Him, prepared to participate fully in His Kingdom.

To believe in a pre-tribulation rapture is to accept, perhaps unconsciously, that the Church’s destiny is to avoid the hard stuff, rather than transform through it.

But the true pattern in Scripture is deliverance through adversity, not deliverance from it.

Noah was not lifted out of the earth, he was preserved in the ark as judgment passed. Daniel wasn’t removed from Babylon, he was sustained within it. The early disciples were not promised protection from persecution, but the power to endure and witness through it.

The rapture narrative, then, acts as a subtle distortion, one that resonates with a culture addicted to comfort and eager to escape the chaos unfolding around us. It undermines spiritual readiness by framing hardship as evidence of God’s absence, rather than recognizing it as the very furnace where our faith is purified, our courage is forged, and the Bride is made ready.

Jesus prayed, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15). His prayer was not for removal, but for fortification.

C.S. Lewis once said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

The coming tribulations are not interruptions of God’s plan but part of His means of awakening and separating the true from the false. The shaking is the sorting.

This is precisely why the rapture doctrine, as it has been popularly imagined, is so spiritually dangerous. It subtly disarms the Church, soothing believers into passivity when the times require sober discernment and very significant practical action. It offers a counterfeit timeline and a counterfeit comfort, distracting from the actual nature of the end-time conflict as a deliberate, visible sorting of allegiances. The faithful are not called to escape, but to remain radiant, coherent, and unshaken in the midst of Babylon’s dissolution.

The belief in a pre-tribulation rapture also benefits the global elite by producing a passive, disengaged Church that anticipates escape rather than endurance. When believers are convinced they’ll be removed before crisis, tyranny, or persecution, they are far less likely to prepare, stand firm, or challenge rising systems of control. This mindset weakens resistance to global governance, surveillance, technocracy, and social engineering, all while redirecting the Church’s focus away from advancing the Kingdom on earth. Instead of building, stewarding, or confronting darkness, a rapture-focused Church waits to leave, creating the perfect vacuum for elite agendas to grow unchecked.

God has never promised to spare His people from the fire, but He has promised to be with them in it. From the wilderness to the furnace, from exile to persecution, the pattern of Scripture is clear: God sustains, preserves, and empowers His people through the shaking, not by removing them from it. The return of Christ isn’t a secret vanishing, it will be a cosmic unveiling, a thunderous, visible, once-for-all event that leaves no room for speculation or confusion (Matthew 24:27; Revelation 1:7)… wait till I get to that topic!

So, the call to the end-time Church is to overcome the lies of this world and to bear witness under pressure. To radiate the unshakable love and government of Christ in our homes and families when everything else begins to fall. This is the true remnant Church: victorious in suffering, luminous within the story, and rooted securely in Christ.

The inheritance of the saints isn’t found in absence from the battlefield, but in standing faithfully on it.

To teach otherwise is to encode a false signal into the Body, one that primes a generation for a deliverance that won’t arrive in the form they anticipate. It weakens spiritual perception when it is needed most and dulls the inner resonance required to navigate engineered chaos. Many sincere believers have been left exposed and spiritually disoriented by this distortion, so part of our task now is to recalibrate the frequency and prepare hearts to endure the coming days with coherence and embodied trust.

Because the true question before us is a matter of our covenantal allegiance. We are being transfigured through the furnace, refined, pruned, and re-patterned for fidelity. Christ isn’t returning for a Bride in hiding, shielded from discomfort and softened by ease, but for one whose love remained radiant in the midst of collapse. Not one who fled Babylon, but one who stood in unshakable truth while Babylon paraded every counterfeit of comfort, pleasure, and power.

A bride who could not be seduced, bought, or broken.

What is coming upon the world is a total architecture of control, engineered through biometric systems, surveillance, social credit, and synthetic identity. As our access to the normal systems of life becomes conditional, and our freedom is replaced by the empire’s permission, many will grow desperate for relief. It is in this vulnerable moment that another “taking” may occur, not by the hand of God, but through the machinery of deception. Many will be swept into digital conformity, trading true sovereignty for a synthetic salvation, but others will remain anchored in truth and unmoved by the lie.

I believe that the popular rapture narrative is a misdirection. The real escape is inward and forward into deeper union with Christ, into our covenant alignment with His Kingdom, and into the unshakable architecture of truth that endures when everything else falls.