Birth Pangs – Nation against Nation, Kingdom against Kingdom

As a natural follow-up to wars and rumors of wars, Jesus added to His prophecy of BBP’s (beginning of birth pangs) by saying this: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. “ (Mark 13:8) The word “nation”, as translated from Greek, is somewhat misleading, as the actual word is “ethnos” or race, primarily gentile race. Mostly, in the NT it is generally translated as gentile or sometimes heathen or nation. The best translation here would be gentile race. Jesus was simply saying that gentiles (non-Jews) of different races would be coming against one and another in the last days. Can you think of where that’s happening now, at this time ? It seems that here in the US, with the election of a recent past president, racial issues have come to the forefront. If one disagreed with his politics, the race card was immediately played, and one was promptly accused of being racist. The next president was accused of racism no matter what he did. Actions taken to control our borders, control of travel to the US by Islamic radicals, support for Christian morality, labeling China as the source of the pandemic, etc. were all called by the leftist politicians, and main-stream media as racist. This has carried over to our current leftist in the white house, where just being Caucasian is racist. The extreme rise of things like “critical race theory” is alarming and is being taught in our public schools. All this in a country where systemic racism has been largely eradicated, and only exists in the minds of the radical left. Unfortunately, what’s happening here, has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world, and perceived racism is causing all sorts of division. Unlike the US which is a melting pot of ethnicities, most of the other nations of the world are populated by a dominant nationality and culture. A little research shows that many, if not most, of these nations consider their indigenous population to be a superior race, though not often publicly stated. This is also true in much of the middle east. Without going into many specifics, I think you can see the problem here. Racially motivated strife is bubbling to the surface all over the world. Truly, as Jesus said would happen, gentile race against gentile race is prominent, world-wide, in our day. This, of course is anti biblical and anti Christian. God created only one race, the human race. We differ only according to the amount of melanin in our skin.

The other part of Jesus prophecy pits “kingdom against kingdom”. Kingdom here means a “realm ruled by royalty”. In other words, a nation or country ruled by a single authoritarian, such as a king, despot, or head of a theocracy. It would leave out countries led by democracies or parliamentary systems such as the US and most European countries. Again, the middle east is rife with this sort of despotic rule. To name just a few kingdoms against kingdoms in the ME: Iran vs Iraq, Saudi Arabia vs Yemen, Iran vs Saudi Arabia, Turkey vs Syria, Armenia vs Azerbaijan, etc. etc.

I don’t think there is any question that these BBP’s are currently being fulfilled. I my next post I’ll discuss earthquakes and famines.