I propose that those groups and individuals who are prominent in announcing how the final global crisis will develop towards the destruction of the forces of evil. Typically in Christian circles, the final events include a  war that is popularized as Armageddon, but there is also a severe personal conflict between allegiance to God and allegiance to the Beast – that  secular power that dominates the kingdoms of the world and demands worship. So let’s say that those people who can identify the Beast and its mechanisms for enforcing it sovereignty will be the people who most quickly turn to accept what the Beast says, because, for one, it is reasonable and right to submit to authority.  The confidence with which people identify the weeds for uprooting from the Lord’s garden leaves much to be desired.  If we are prepared to ignore what the Church’s Lord says about the similarity between weeds and grain it is certain that we are at risk of misidentifying the beast’s false God.  It is a cowardly mindset that presents love as impatience.

Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’  And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’ The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them’. (Matthew 13:24-29, NASB)

I wonder what rubric encourages people in the modern era to believe that they can identify false grain and root them out.  Maybe it is a massacre strategy based on Ezekiel 9.   Maybe it is a xenophobic mindset that has no time or compassion for the people who are clearly the targets of God’s love. Most likely the eagerness to create a garden (or church) in our own image is more impressive than the secret of the moment when divine forbearance ends.  They’d rather kill than die for the lost.  But we knew that: love for God is a perfect dud when love for humanity is a secondary option.  Our heroes cannot be people who have no testimony of assurance, only incidental hope, nor can our heroes be cats living in fear of a roaring lion, not when we belong to the pride of the Victorious Judean Lion.