weaponizing babylon

"Come! Let’s go up to Yahweh’s mountain;
    to the temple of the God of Ya‘qōb.
He will teach us his ways,
    and we shall walk in his paths.”
For Torah will come out of Ṣîyôn,
    and the word of Yahweh from Yerûšālāyim.
Then will He mediate between nations;
    He will reconcile many peoples,
so that they will retool their swords into plow blades
    and their spears into pruning instruments.
One nation will no longer lift the sword against another,
    nor will they any longer train for warfare” (Isaiah 2.3-4, author’s translation).
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I have been away on vacation, but Caligula’s madness has continued unabated, assisted and encouraged, of course, by his deplorable followers. It would be a full time job to comment on each of his moments of madness. One must pick and choose. Today, I choose this one.

We hear in the Isaiah passage that heads this post the prophetic voice. It is the voice of God heard from Zion. It is a voice of peace, a message of reconciliation. It is a voice of disarmament.

In Caligula, we hear the prophetic voice of a false prophet, an anti-Christ. Compare Caligula’s “prophecy” uttered this week, to that of Isaiah’s above.

“He [Abe, Japan’s Prime Minister] will shoot them [North Korean missiles] out of the sky when he completes the purchase of lots of additional military equipment from the United States… The prime minister of Japan is going to be purchasing massive amounts of military equipment, as he should. It’s a lot of jobs for us and a lot of safety for Japan.”

Here, Caligula, like Reagan and Bush and Clinton and Bush and Obama before him, conducts himself more like an arms dealer than a head of state (was he wearing a plaid sport coat when he spoke these blasphemous words?). Here, Caligula encourages a nation that, half a century ago, turned its back on its previous warmongering ways and “retooled its swords into plow blades spears,” to now forsake its repentance, and, as a dog, turn “to his own vomit again” and as a “sow that was washed [turn] back to her wallowing in the mire” (See 2 Peter 2.22).

Of course, in addition to expanding the madness of war it has the added benefit of enriching the bank accounts (kept in tax havens where no government can get to them, of course) of the American Military Industrial Complex—indeed the biggest the planet has ever seen. Now, isn’t that something of which to be proud!

So, you tell me, to which prophetic word does Caligula give voice--the true or false; that of Christ or of anti-Christ? Make no mistake about it. Caligula is a prophet. He is a false prophet. He speaks nothing but “damnable heresies.” America has made its choice, and made his voice its own.
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We desperately need more true prophetic voices to proclaim boldly and loudly against his “damnable heresies.”

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not” (2 Peter 2.1-3).