The Super War

I received a fortune cookie today. Nevermind where they come from, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that the cookie tells a truth in a simple mysterious way. When I cracked this one and read the slip, it spoke volumes. 'It's not WW3. It's the Super War.' Let that sink in. The last war was called the war to end all wars, right? Did it? Clearly not. Perhaps what we are all seeing is something we are confused by that is sweeping the world at such a pace it is overwhelming our senses and perspective. I believe we are the first passengers to witness literally every single conflict mankind has had since the crucifixion being restarted. Bear with me. This covers a lot but once you see it, I do not believe you will unsee it no matter your politics or religion or nationality. To see the world for what it is today you need to back up. Not from your TV, or your laptop or your house. You need to leave your neighborhood and launch up. Beyond your city and state, up into the sky where, as long as you're not a flat earther, you can see the globe spin beneath you. Keep going. Let the highways become threads, the cities become points of light and the borders disappear altogether. From that altitude, Dallas isn't Dallas anymore. Washington isn't Washington. London isn't London. Jerusalem isn't Jerusalem. They are all simply places on one small blue sphere floating through a universe that doesn't care very much about our arguments. Then you have to back out of today. Beyond yesterday. Beyond last year and the last election and the last war and the last century. Keep backing up until you are no longer looking at a specific time at all, but at Time itself, as though everything mankind has done since the beginning is happening in one enormous day. The Roman Empire is there. The Crusades are there. The conquest of kingdoms and continents is there. The American Revolution is there. The Civil War is there. The World Wars are there. The Iranian Revolution is there. The Six-Day War is there. The Cold War is there. China and Taiwan are there. Korea is there. Cuba is there. Israel and its neighbors are there. The collapse of empires is there. The rise and fall of ideologies is there. Everything we insist upon placing into separate chapters of history is suddenly taking place on the same page. Think of each a a little ember, a glowing coal collection all over the planet. Each confilct sitting hot yet dormant. Perhaps this is how God sees the Earth at will. Maybe Time, which we experience one second at a time, is not a limitation He shares. Maybe He sees the whole thing at once, every beginning and every ending, every choice and consequence, every birth and death, every war that we think happened a thousand years ago and every war we think is happening today. Perhaps that is also how the enemy recalls it. Not as we do, one generation at a time, but as a long record of human weakness, with every grievance, every wound, every betrayal and every hatred available to be reopened. Now that you're in that lofty space, looking down through all of history at once, imagine that every place mankind has ever fought is represented by those embers. Not a dramatic Hollywood fire. A coal. Something that burned hot once and then appeared to go dark. Some buried under centuries of peace. Some buried under treaties. Others buried beneath new borders. Many buried beneath prosperity. Some buried because the generation that remembered the original conflict finally died. But they are still there. There is an ember for the Crusades, and another for the centuries of conquest and reconquest between Christian and Muslim civilizations. There are embers for the religious wars of Europe, for the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, for empire and the resistance to empire, for nationalism and the endless argument over who belongs where. There is an ember for the American Revolution, when thirteen colonies decided they would rather fight the most powerful empire on Earth than remain under British rule. There is another for Ireland and the long struggle between Ireland and Britain. There is one for the American Civil War, that terrible argument in which Americans discovered that a house can be divided deeply enough that brothers will kill brothers over what the house is supposed to mean. There is an ember for the Russian struggle with the West, for Napoleon's march into Russia, for the Russian Empire, for the Bolshevik Revolution, for the Second World War and the Cold War that followed it. There is an ember for China and Taiwan, where the Chinese Civil War never quite received the courtesy of a final chapter. There is one for Korea, where the shooting stopped but the war never really became peace. There is one for Cuba, where the Cold War came close enough to nuclear annihilation that the entire species briefly discovered how fragile its existence could be. There is an ember for Iran, for Persia, for the Shah, for the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and for everything that followed it. There is an ember for the Six-Day War and the Arab-Israeli wars that surround it. There are embers for Jerusalem, for the Ottoman Empire, for the British Mandate, for Zionism and Arab nationalism, for Palestinians and Israelis, for the religious and territorial arguments that have made that little piece of geography carry an almost impossible weight of human history. And if we are honest, the pile of coals doesn't stop with countries. There are embers for class. The worker and the owner. The rich and the poor. Capital and labor. Capitalism and socialism. There are embers for race, for the ancient human habit of dividing people by blood and then deciding that our own blood is somehow worth more. There are embers for religion and atheism, for the believer and the unbeliever, for one denomination against another and one interpretation of God against another. There are embers for men and women, for fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, parents and children, for generations that look at the generations coming behind them and wonder what the hell happened to the world they built. There are embers for every political ideology mankind has ever turned into a substitute for wisdom. There are embers for freedom and authority, individualism and collectivism, nationalism and globalism, tradition and revolution. There are embers for every tribe we have ever invented and every reason we have ever found to explain why the tribe on the other side of the line is the problem. Now imagine all of those embers spread across the Earth, across the centuries, sitting quietly in the darkness. And then imagine Satan coming out of his lair on a given day. For giggles, let's pick September 11, 2001. We'll choose that because the whole globe saw the bell rung live on TV and the world stopped. Everyone paid attention that moment. That moment was very unique. Understand that the New Millennium started in 2001, not in 2000. The Jewish New Year is in September. That year Sept 17th started Rosh Hashana with Yom Kippur the 26th. So from a celestial perspective this was like 'New Year's Eve', ushering in the next millennium. Really odd coincidence. Say that moment ushers in the villains entrance with a bang. Sorry for the crude metaphor. Step forward as the stories have progressed since. Do you see, an acceleration of grievances of all kinds or a slowing? He doesn't need to start a war. He doesn't need to invent a new grievance. He doesn't need to create a new hatred. That would be unnecessary work. The embers are already there. They have been there for centuries. All he has to do is walk among them and blow. He just blows on what has been glowing for years, hundreds of years. One ember glows. Then another. Then another. The old conflicts begin receiving oxygen at the same time. Woosh. The religious ember glows brighter. The nationalist ember glows brighter. The Middle Eastern ember glows brighter. The American ember glows brighter. The European ember glows brighter. The Russian ember glows brighter. The Chinese ember glows brighter. The cultural embers begin glowing. The political embers begin glowing. The racial embers begin glowing. The class embers begin glowing. The religious and secular embers begin glowing. Men and women find new reasons to distrust one another. Parents and children discover that they inhabit different moral universes. Neighbors begin sorting themselves into tribes. Nobody needs to coordinate any of it. That's the beauty of the strategy. You simply give mankind's existing grievances enough oxygen and let mankind do what mankind has always done. We are very good at finishing other people's sentences with accusations. We are even better at finishing their arguments with hatred. That is where I believe we are. Not standing at the beginning of a new war, waiting for someone to light the match. Standing in the middle of every old war at once. Restarted. And this is why the usual language doesn't quite fit. We call something World War III, but that suggests another 1914 or another 1939, one great conflict with armies divided into recognizable camps. What if that isn't what we are watching? What if the phenomenon is broader and stranger than that? What if the Chinese Civil War, the Cold War, the Crusades, the Iranian Revolution, the Arab-Israeli wars, the old European wars of religion, the struggle between empire and independence, the American Civil War, the battle between capitalism and socialism, the arguments over race, sex, religion, class and national identity are not becoming one war in the conventional sense, but are all being reactivated within the same period of history? Then the battlefield isn't one place. It is everywhere. And the weapons aren't all guns. Some are currencies, elections, algorithms, sanctions. Even propaganda. Others are demographic changes, missiles. Enter the survellience and the drones. More are economic dependencies, religious convictions. There are even ones you hold with friends or family. Every ember feels the oxygen and the energy increases. You're getting this aren't you? Some are simply words whispered into the ear of a frightened population until the population begins whispering them to itself. This is where the world becomes very different when you back up far enough to see it. The United States isn't merely having an election. America is wrestling with the old question of who owns the republic and what the republic is supposed to be. Europe isn't merely debating immigration. It is publicly wrestling with the old questions of civilization, sovereignty, religion, identity and belonging. Russia isn't merely fighting over Ukraine. Russia and Europe are reopening an argument about borders, security and Russia's place in the European order that has survived empires, revolutions and two world wars. China isn't merely looking at Taiwan. China is confronting an unfinished national conflict that began in the Chinese Civil War. Korea isn't merely threatening Korea. The Cold War is still sitting there, seventy years later, like an old tenant who never bothered to move out. Iran isn't merely confronting Israel and America. The Islamic Revolution is still casting a long shadow over the Iranian state and the Middle East. Jerusalem isn't merely a city in a current conflict. It is a place where thousands of years of religious and political memory have been compressed into a few square miles. And America and Britain aren't merely two allies having disagreements. The relationship between the old British financial world and the American financial and political system is itself entering a period of change. The architecture of money is changing. Digital currencies, payment rails, sanctions, alternative financial systems and the struggle for control over capital are becoming instruments of geopolitical power. A relationship that once seemed permanent is discovering that even old alliances have incentives. Everything is connected. That is the part we keep missing. Isaiah 3:5 'And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.' We take the ember out of the pile and study it under a microscope. We become experts on the ember. We publish books about the ember. We build universities around the ember. We elect politicians because of the ember. Then we wonder why the room is getting hotter. Perhaps because the room contains thousands of them. Perhaps because we have misunderstood the nature of the danger. The danger is not that one ancient conflict returns. The danger is that every damn one of them return together all at once. That is a very different thing and that is why at the end of this reading you may completely re-evaluate what you are seeing in totality and how you choise to move forward in your heart and mind. Societies can survive one argument or two. They clearly can even survive a terrible civil war if enough of its people still believe there is something worth rebuilding when the war ends. But what happens when the argument is everywhere? When the country and the countries are fighting every single conflict they've ever had at once? More oxygen blows on the embers with every tweet, every news release every statement from the 'officials'. When Europe is fighting over identity while Europe is confronting Russia? When the Middle East is fighting over religion and territory while the world is fighting over energy? When China is confronting Taiwan while America is divided internally? When the financial system itself becomes another theater of geopolitical competition? When every faction can find an ancient wound that proves it is the victim? That is when history becomes combustible. And perhaps that is Satan's genius. He doesn't have to create the hatred. He merely has to remind us where we buried it. He doesn't have to teach mankind how to divide. We've been practicing for thousands of years. We are divided with scars and wounds that can be opened instantly. He doesn't have to convince us that the other man is different. We already know he is. He only has to convince us that because he is different, he is dangerous, and because he is dangerous, anything done to him is justified. Once that happens, the machinery takes over. The Christian can hate the Muslim. The Muslim can hate the Christian. The nationalist can hate the immigrant. The immigrant can hate the nationalist. The socialist can hate the capitalist. The capitalist can hate the socialist. The left can hate the right. The right can hate the left. Men can hate women. Women can hate men. Children can hate parents. Parents can hate children. The citizen can hate his neighbor. Eventually the argument becomes almost irrelevant. Hatred has become the argument. God promised paradise. Even heaven on Earth. So what would be the enemies goal? The opposite. 'What if I could gin up so much hatred, all of it at once that His creation would eventually submit to death with an inevitability of self loathing?' Take a look around you. The embers are flaming not aren't they? If you wanted to create Hell on Earth, what better architecture could there be? God's promise, at least as understood through the Christian imagination, is reconciliation: mankind restored to God, creation restored, the walls between human beings ultimately removed. Satan's counterargument would be separation. Divide the family. Parse the nation. Split the culture. Anger the sexes. Poise the generations against each other. Confront the religions. Rage the races. Divide the classes. Enflame the borders of the countries. Carve at the human heart until a man can stand in the middle of his own civilization surrounded by billions of people and see almost everyone as an enemy. That would be Hell. Not because there is fire everywhere. Because there is no love anywhere. That is why I keep coming back to the image of the embers. The world doesn't need another war. It has plenty. Every war it has ever fought sitting somewhere beneath the surface of civilization, waiting for conditions that make the old grievance useful again. Some are legitimate grievances. Some are ancient injustices. Some are legitimate fears. Many are myths. Others are pure propaganda. Some are ancient memories distorted by generations. Legitimate truths twisted to became weapons because somebody discovered that a wounded people is easier to mobilize than a contented one. The ember doesn't care. The Beast delivers it oxygen and it glows until the flame turns inferno. Right now, all over the planet, oxygen is being supplied. You are reading daily press about the liberal use of nuclear weapons. Those are not the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Real nuclear weapons that eclipse that destruction. World leaders are openly threatening populations with these like a crack head at CVS trying to get to the Sudafed. That doesn't mean the world is doomed. It doesn't mean every ember will become a war. It doesn't mean history has written the ending. Human beings possess another extraordinary capacity, which is the ability to recognize the trap before they step into it. That is the reason to see the pattern. Not to frighten people. To wake them up the hell up. Because once you understand that the Super War is not one war but the simultaneous reactivation of the conflicts that have divided mankind throughout history, the answer changes. Stop asking which side you should hate. Start asking who benefits from the hatred. Ask which ancient grievance gives your tribe permission to destroy the other tribe. Which grievance does your God say… 'Yeah, go ahead and push the button on those bastards.' If you recall, he opened the door to all children being His. We are pushing back on the door in an ignorant way to the service of evil itself. You start asking whether the grievance has become more important than the human being standing in front of you. Perhaps stop looking at the world as twelve separate crises. Start looking at the system. The plan of coordination above any level if your local goat worshipping, owl saluting cabal. Back up. Look down at the whole strange blue planet, with its tiny borders and its enormous history, watching billions of human beings carry the memories of the dead into the lives of the living. From there, the tragedy becomes almost painfully simple. We are one species. We have one home. Certainly we have thousands of years of reasons to hate one another all for things we manufactured. Every one of those reasons is still available. Maybe that is what the Super War really is. Not a war that somebody starts. A war that history has already supplied, waiting only for enough oxygen. Perhaps somewhere beyond what we can see, the enemy understands that better than we do. He doesn't need to conquer mankind. He only needs mankind to decide that mankind is the enemy. Good morning. I hope you are awake. This is where I believe we are. The intervention we desperately need is beyond our capabilities. I'd love to quote the Bible here, God's direction to you. I think it is more helpful if you punch a few keystrokes into Google and see a few quick paragraphs that were designed for this moment. If you think the book is hard to understand or have a fear of it. Let that go for one moment. Please go google and read… Romans 12. It us truly what you need to walk away with today. It's no more complicated than Beatles lyrics.