Perhaps the most frequent question I have received as a pastor in America over the last year or so is a version of ‘What on earth is going on?’
It is not hard to understand why variations along the lines of that kind of question are being asked by people today. We have clear indications of cultural change all around us, as well as a grievous lack of decorum and even basic civility in cultural battles. We have a multi-polar global scene with nations jostling for influence and power culminating in various wars or regional conflicts. We have terrorism continuing to spread its blight of vicious evil on the unwary. We have political populism that has thrown up global leaders who have caught many people by surprise.
What is going on?
First of all, we need to remind ourselves of the Sovereign Plan. This is not just to say that God is in his heaven and he will do whatever he wants. Nor is it to encourage a naïve sort of disengaged passivity among Christian people. Instead, more specifically and actively, it is to remind ourselves that God does have a sovereign plan and it is being worked out.