The word of the Lord came to me:  “Son of man, prophesy and say, ‘This is what the Lord says:

“‘A sword, a sword,
sharpened and polished—
sharpened for the slaughter,
polished to flash like lightning!’”
-Ezekiel 21.8-10

Sometime around 2001 I began to have an increasing sense of unease – a sense that a darkness was growing in the earth. And the feeling became so intense I could almost physically see it – it was palpable, like I could reach out and touch it. It was so real that I remember wondering why nobody else could see it too. I guess it lasted for a year or so and then I felt it no more.

But since that time I’ve watched the world change in ways that people could never have anticipated. (Well, some of them, at least. George Orwell seemed to possess remarkable prescience about our age).

In the year of my birth there were ten known terrorist attacks (yes, 10). In the year 2000 there were 1,351. In 2013 there were over ten thousand. And it’s not just the volume of attacks, it’s the ferocity and savagery as well. Victims are no longer simply shot, they are butchered, burned, and dismembered live on the internet for a worldwide audience.

In 2004 we witnessed the largest Tsunami on record. In 2011 three massive earthquakes in Japan triggered another Tsunami and a nuclear meltdown. Smaller but still devastating earthquakes have hit Haiti, Sumatra, Iran, New Zealand, Chile, China and Nepal, to name only a few. The USA has witnessed the worst storms in its history, not once but repeatedly, including record snowfalls, hurricanes, and tornadoes as well as massive wildfires, heatwaves, record cold, record floods, and long-term drought – these last two occurring simultaneously.

There have been revolutions, coups, and civil wars including those in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Sudan, and Ukraine to name a few, and civil uprisings in places as diverse as Bahrain, Thailand, China, and Hong Kong.

In order to save us from all this chaos our elected governments, in our best interest of course, ensure that we are watched, filmed, monitored, listened to, and analysed like never before. Our fingerprints are recorded, our voice patterns recorded, our gait recorded, our irises scanned, our DNA taken without permission, our conversations filtered by complex algorithms for key phrases that may be deemed dangerous or perhaps merely unacceptable, and every text, email and website visited is logged by someone somewhere and stored on a server for all eternity. In some Western countries merely expressing an opinion (or a biblical stance) publicly is sufficient reason to be harassed by police, arrested, or even prosecuted. And that is so much easier to do now that our police forces are de facto military units.

And I haven’t even gotten to the health scares we’ve had like SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, bird flu, and Ebola. Or the fact that we seem to be staggering from one financial crisis to the next, believing blindly that the same people who got us into this mess will get us out.

Passenger planes disappear into thin air or are randomly shot out of the sky. Large groups of people simply vanish in Mexico and nobody knows why. We’re fighting a war on terror, but how can you fight terror with guns?

And I could go on to talk about the rampant greed, consumerism, and self-centredness that has spread like a virus through the veins of the world, or the (re)moving of ancient philosophical, legal, and social foundations that has taken place in the last 15 years. But those of you who were fairly nonplussed when we started are now on the verge of falling asleep. So I will just ask,

What is going on?!

See, darkness covers the earth
and thick darkness is over the peoples
(Isaiah.60.2)

In the 1930s a darkness began to spread across Germany. People didn’t perhaps consider it a darkness or, if they did, they soon became accustomed to the gloom. We all know what happened next.

We have become accustomed to the gloom. We get on with our lives, our jobs, our study, our children because life does go on. But we seem oblivious to the falling darkness. Yet Christians, of all people, should be able to read the times and seasons.

Now, I’m not trying to be some pessimistic forecaster of the world’s implosion. (Too late!) I hate the doomsayers as much as you do. Telling you how bad things are doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. What I’m trying to say is that things are dark now, like we have never seen before. Yes, the world has seen catastrophes, plagues, coups, revolutions, and financial turmoil. But it has never seen them all together and on a such a scale of magnitude.

I know I sound like a placard-waving prophet of eternal negativity – I’m honestly not trying to be. But I’ve watched this darkness roll across the earth with increasing alarm, and I’ve watched the Church as it has done little to either challenge it or to prepare for it. But now the night is upon us.

What will we do? because this isn’t the end.

Something else is coming.

[This is the point where you either pause and think about what you need to do, or you flick over to eBay to buy that new cycling sweater you saw yesterday].

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OK, I was going to finish there, but that’s probably not the cheeriest of places to leave you hanging, so I’ll just add this to stave off the depression:

Yes, we are enveloped in a darkness that isn’t going away. But it’s in the darkness that the light is most easily seen.

I live in Hong Kong – neon capital of the world. There’s so much light in the city you can drive here with your headlights off and never notice. (Believe me. I have the police officer’s frosty demeanour indelibly etched on my memory as proof). Nobody needs light when it’s light. But in the darkness, a single lamp can be seen for miles. And the thicker the darkness, the easier it is to see the light.

Sad and oppressive and evil as it is, this darkness we are in is not to be lamented. It is our opportunity to shine.

See, darkness covers the earth
and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the Lord rises upon you
and his glory appears over you.
Nations will come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
(Isaiah 60.2-3)

Will they come to your brightness? Or is the light that is in you darkness? (Matthew 6.23).