God’s Movie
We look around us and see darkness gaining in power. We see the Church losing its focus. We see the persecution of believers, and the imminent threat of more to come.
From our local perspective in current events, it appears as if darkness is winning. For many of us, current events confirm our vision of the end times. In that vision, the world is overwhelmed by darkness and with it the Church and the Kingdom. When all appears lost, Jesus will return to rescue the Church and impose his Kingdom by force upon the peoples of the earth. It feels like a Hollywood movie, and we think we are in the final scenes of that movie. But are we really?
How many times have believers thought they were in the end times? How many times have believers just known that Jesus was returning soon because things around them were getting so dark?
The problem is that we’re evaluating God’s kingdom by our own snapshot of history. We think that the snapshot represents the last scene of the movie—the part where the hero breaks in to rescue us. And of course we are in that last scene because we are key players in the movie, right? But in reality, what we see is just a snapshot, a still photo, somewhere in the middle of the movie. We forget that the movie up to our point has had many such dark moments like ours, or worse. In those dark moments, some of our favorite characters even died. But it was not the end of the movie. Dark moments gave way to scenes of light, the kingdom advanced, the Church grew stronger, and the story continued to unfold.
Why is it we interpret the entire movie by our current episode of darkness, rather than its many scenes where the kingdom of light shines brightly? Why do we think the final scene will be one where darkness prevails rather than light?
The answer is simple. We want the movie to be about us. We don’t want to be characters in the middle of the movie, like those who pass from the plotline in a tragic scene. And if our scene is dark, then we assume the entire movie is dark. After all, God’s plan for the kingdom is all about what we experience, right? We don’t say this, of course. But we feel it. In the end, we have a very self-centric vision of the kingdom and our part in it.
In God’s story about his kingdom, we play our scene and then pass from view as others pick up the plot. History unfolds beyond our short part in it, and God’s kingdom continues to advance until it becomes a great mountain that fills the whole earth. (See Daniel 2:35.)
Jesus said his kingdom is like leaven that permeates the whole batch of dough. It is light and salt to a dark and tasteless world. Of the increase of his kingdom there will be no end. Always increasing, always permeating, it grows until the knowledge of God covers the earth as the waters cover the seas.
This is not a movie of defeat. God’s kingdom does not need to be rescued in the end, nor does his Church. The kingdom will not fail, because its King does what he sets out to do. The Church will not fail, because its Head speaks the words of God who do not return void.
God’s story is not defined by our part in it. Rather, our part in it is defined by God’s story. And when the nations plot against God, he laughs at them (Psalm 2). Let’s get God’s perspective on current events and our part in his movie. Let us laugh in scenes of darkness, and laugh even more in scenes of light. Amen.
