HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 19, 2024 – We are blessed to share the earth with God’s babies. All of God’s non-human creatures are on the same homeward journey as we are. Many of us have (or have had) God’s babies as pets, and so know first-hand what it means to love them and be loved by them. It’s a love that is unlike any other in its transparency and is in fact closer in characteristic to the love we share with God than the love we share with people.

I mention our relationship with God’s babies, whether domesticated or wild, because one day most of them will turn on us. They’ll see us as enemies and prey. Imagine walking out of your house and being attacked by a flock of birds, like in a Hitchcock movie. And if you somehow manage to fight them off, you’re then surrounded by a pack of dogs, growling and snarling and moving in for the kill. Even heavily armed, you’d be hard-pressed to fend off so many animal attacks from all sides all at once, not to mention the insects that would also be swarming you, carrying deadly diseases.

What a horror show it will be! We can only pray that God will take us Home before this happens, because happen it will. When the time comes and Hell empties out, all the disembodied demon spirits will be looking for live bodies to inhabit, and once all the humans without God’s seal are possessed, they’ll start taking over animals and insects.

Jesus once famously allowed demon spirits to enter pigs, so there is scriptural precedence for it.  But animals don’t necessarily need to be inhabited by demon spirits to carry out the nasty part of God’s justice, because animals do God’s will without question. The best examples of animal compliance to God in the Bible can be found in the animals and insects that played a role in the plagues of Egypt, in the ass that refused to budge (even when beaten by its master), in the ravens that fed Elijah, and in the lion that killed the children who mocked Elisha. Even from these few examples we can see that God uses “the beasts of the Earth” to carry out his will, whether for good or evil. Animals simply do as they’re told by God, and to the precise measure.

Animals occupy an important place in God’s economy as well as in his plan of salvation. They’re so important, God spared far more animals during the flood than humans. God’s babies serve us through their labour, their companionship, and yes, even through their sacrifice so that we can be fed and clothed.

But one day, God’s babies will serve a much darker purpose. Then we’ll understand why God made them with such strength and such speed and such teeth and such claws, and why even just a pinprick of venom from a tiny spider can kill a grown man. When all these weapons are given into the hand of Satan and collectively turned against us, we’d better pray that we have God’s seal, or better yet, we’d better pray we’re not still here.

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If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land, and they spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of the beasts…. Though [Noah, Daniel, and Job] were in it, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they only shall be delivered themselves. (Ezekiel 14:15, 18)

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And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. (Revelation 6:8)

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Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. (Amos 5:18-19)

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For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world…. (Matthew 24: 21)

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