Isaiah 13:5. "They come from a distant land, from the land of the heavens, the Lord and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole earth."

This is from an oracle about the destruction of Babylon, but it reads like many other prophecies of destruction, even those of Israel itself (see, for example, Hosea 5:8-15; and Jeremiah 25:8-11). The prophecies of destruction have a familiar pattern, one from which we can and should learn. If we honestly look at our world right now, I think it is pretty easy to see we may have earned God's wrath, and further destruction may be in our future if we don't repent.

One repeating part of these prophecies is that God speaks of destruction as coming from Him - "the Lord and the weapons of his indignation" (Isaiah 13:5); "I will utterly destroy them" (Jeremiah 25:9); "upon them I will pour out my wrath like water" (Hosea 5:10), but He also shows that He is working through his creatures and creation - "I ... have summoned my mighty men to execute my anger" (Isaiah 13:3); "I will send for the tribes of the north ... and for Nebuchadrezzar ... and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants." (Jeremiah 25:9). I think sometimes we fail to see the supernatural in things, we fail to see the patterns that Biblical prophecies are trying to point out to us. We see events, even destruction, happening around us and we don't stop to think that God might be telling us something, but everything relates back to God, we forget that at our peril!

Nothing happens without God's permission - whether part of His perfect will or His permissive will. So everything that happens is from God, in the sense that He has allowed it to happen for a greater good. Sometimes the greater good is a call to repentance to a people who have gone very far astray. Unfortunately, if that's the case, the longer we ignore the supernatural aspects of what is happening, the longer we put off our repentance, and therefore things continue to get worse. This is the downward spiral of collapse. It can happen in our individual lives, in our societies, and even in the world. It can come from within or without, or both, but if it is happening, God is permitting it for a reason. That reason may be, as God says to Isaiah, to "punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity" and to "put an end to the pride of the arrogant." (Isaiah 13:11).

We know from the Bible that God does this, and Revelation is an indication that it is not just in our past, but in our future. God eventually punishes evil, after giving time for repentance, so the possibility of punishment should certainly be on our radar. One point of prophecy is to get us thinking this way, and we are all called to be prophets. It is a good idea to try to see what is happening in our world from God's point of view. If we see the downward spiral destruction, that is a call to repentance, either individually or communally (or both). We should look to ourselves and our own repentance, always, but we should also go out, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, and warn the world in whatever way we can (like a Substack, for example (cough, cough:)) that the destruction we see beginning may be a call to communal repentance.