Obediah 1-21 (the entire book). The very short (one chapter) book of the prophet Obadiah is entirely his prophecy of the destruction of Edom due to their hostility towards their brothers in Israel. Edom was secure in its mountain strongholds, and frequently harassed the Israelites, gloated over their suffering at the hands of others, looted them when they were attacked, cut off their survivors from escape, and exhibited all kinds of hostility towards them. Their punishment will be great for harassing God's people, especially since, as descendants of Esau, they are themselves brothers and sisters to Israel. God will destroy Edom and will save the Israelites. "Saviors shall go up to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord's."

In the current massive spiritual battle in which we are engaged, the battle lines are being formed even in the Church and families. We are turning on each other. The devil is reaching further than I have ever seen him in my lifetime to destroy unity at every single level of society. God is unity and order, and the devil is disunity and chaos. When we see the fruits of disunity and chaos, which we are seeing all around us, then we know that the devil has been given a lot of leeway and is taking advantage of it. I can't know why this is happening, but I can see that God wants us to learn from all of this the importance of unity in our families and in our Church, so we can continue to fight the greater threat to our entire world.

The Church is God's, and we are the Church militant. As his army on Earth, we must not let the devil get us fighting among ourselves. We will always have differences of opinion, and each of us has different callings and charisms. That is good - it is how God inspires us individually to fight on the front that he will send us to (or will send to us!). But we can't fight with our brothers because they have different priorities or callings. We must stay united to fight the powers and principalities bearing down on us, rather than fighting each other, as Edom does to Israel. 

I am seeing Edom-like behavior all around me on both sides of the "political" divide (for want of a better word) - Americans are more hateful towards their fellow Americans than they are to truly evil foreign powers; family members are insulting and hateful to those who think differently from them; people are gloating over others' suffering  (I saw a friend on Facebook, after someone was diagnosed with COVID, say he deserved it because she had seen him without a mask).

This is all the devil at work, and if we are not careful we will fall like Edom did. I worry that our nation has gone too far down that path, and may be too corrupt to come back, I'm afraid that it will fall. We can't let our families do the same, we must maintain the unity there and in our Church family. The Church is the haven for the whole world, and the only institution we know will survive until the end of time. It is Mount Zion, where the kingdom shall be the Lord's.