Audio Transcript

As the year draws to a close, so too does our Bible-reading schedule. Thanks to everyone who joined us in 2024 in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan. This late in the year, we find ourselves in the final chapters of Revelation, tomorrow reading Revelation 17 together, a chapter on the mind of Dan, who is a new listener to the podcast. Welcome, Dan. He asks this.

“Pastor John, hello, and thank you for taking my question. This year of 2024 turned out to be another tense year in geopolitics, with two wars happening and leading to lots of talk about the breakout of World War III over growing tensions between the United States and the West against China and Russia and North Korea and Iran. I think I used to understand God’s relationships to the rulers of superpowers of the world as predictive. He was sovereign in that he foreknew what global rulers would freely do. Then I encountered Revelation 17:17. This verse stopped me in my tracks. Everything has changed for me. Can you explain the meaning of this text, whether it generally explains how things work today? If so, what role is God playing in geopolitics right now?”

Before we cut to the question and actually quote the text so people will know what he’s asking about, let me celebrate Dan’s submission to the particularity of biblical teaching. Oh, how I love this. Oh, how needed this is. So many people today are treating the Bible as a kind of nondirective, open-ended story that people can mold into whatever view of God or ethics they want. But the Bible, in fact, is made up of sentences and paragraphs that have intentional meanings from God-inspired authors, and we ought to bring our lives into submission to what those sentences truly teach.

Test Teaching with Scripture

What I long for and pray for, Tony, in our APJ listeners, is that they would be faithful readers of their Bibles — that they become so familiar with the teaching of Scripture that when they read erroneous doctrinal statements, they would think of biblical sentences that say the opposite, and they wouldn’t be swayed away from the truth. For example, not long ago I was reading a major Christian news magazine that contained these two sentences — and they do relate indirectly to Dan’s question, believe it or not.

This is the quote: “Where Calvin taught predestination, Wesley believed that through prevenient grace, God freed the human will sufficiently to accept or reject the offer of salvation.” And now, so far so good. I think that’s accurate. But then this sentence: “God predestined a plan of salvation, not individual people.” Now, I’m not going to blame John Wesley for anything here because he’s way more careful than this writer. That last sentence is just plain false. It’s false for Wesleyans. It’s false for Calvinists like me. It says, “God predestined a plan of salvation, not individual people.”

What I hope for in all our listeners is that when they read a sentence like that, they would say, “Wait, what about Romans 8:29? What about Romans 8:30? ‘Those whom [God] foreknew he predestined. . . . And those whom he predestined he called, and those whom he called he justified, and those whom he justified he glorified.’” Those predestined, those called, those justified, those glorified. These are individual people whom God predestined. Calvinists think that; Wesleyans think that. What we disagree about is the basis of predestination, but both agree that God predestines individual people. I just want our listeners to be people who hear the statement, “God does not predestine individuals,” and say, “That’s not what the Bible teaches. I can think of a verse where that’s not true. It’s just not true. I don’t care what magazine it’s in or who says it.” That’s the kind of Bible people we need.

Now, Dan, who’s asking this question, reflects this mindset. That’s what I’m celebrating. He has a viewpoint in his head about what sovereignty means, and suddenly he sees a sentence in Revelation 17:17 and says, “Whoa, I don’t think that verse is teaching my viewpoint.” Instead of twisting the verse, he changes his viewpoint. Here’s what he says: “I think I used to understand God’s relationships to rulers of superpowers of the world as predictive. He was sovereign in that he foreknew what global rulers would freely do. Then I encountered Revelation 17:17. This verse stopped me in my tracks. Everything has changed for me.” Good, yes. That happens. This is amazing. Here’s a human being with a heart and a mind ready to be led by Scripture.

God’s Sovereignty over World Powers

And he reads this. Here’s what he reads in Revelation 17:12–13, 17: “The ten horns that you saw are ten kings. . . . These are of one mind, and they hand over their power and authority to the beast [the Antichrist]. . . . For God has put it into their hearts” — these ten kings — “to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled.”

“God is sovereign to decide everything that will happen in this world, including the actions of wicked kings.”

Now, what Dan saw in Revelation 17:17 is that his prior view of God’s sovereignty as foreknowing the acts of evil kings didn’t match up with the fairly clear teaching in this verse — namely, God doesn’t just foreknow what these ten kings are going to do, but he “put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by . . . handing over their royal power to the beast [the Antichrist].” So, here we are back at predestination (I meant it that the quote from that magazine has to do with what we’re talking about here) — and God’s sovereignty to decide everything that will happen in this world, including the actions of wicked kings.

Here’s what often happens when a Dan experience — like he had — takes place. What often happens when a teaching of the Bible changes the way we think is that we start seeing the change in the Bible over and over. It’s just amazing. “How could I not have seen that? Here it is, and there it is, and there it is. What in the world was I thinking?”

For example, Proverbs 21:1: “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.” Not just godly kings — all kings, pagan kings. Kings like Cyrus and Artaxerxes when they assisted in the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. Ezra says, “Blessed be the Lord . . . who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 7:27). Cyrus and Artaxerxes were not believers. God just directed their hearts to do what he wanted them to get done. Or Daniel says of the arrogant Belshazzar, “The God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored” (Daniel 5:23). All the arrogant king’s ways are in the hand of God.

Or, most important of all, Acts 4. The Christians are praying about the wicked rulers, Herod and Pilate, and the greatest evil that’s ever been done in the history of the world — namely, the murder of the Son of God. And they pray like this: “Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27–28). They murdered the Son of God, and God predestined it. If he hadn’t, nobody would be saved.

Absolutely Sovereign, Wise, and Good

What all these verses show, especially the last ones, is that God, in his infinite wisdom and righteousness and power, is able to design the deeds of evil kings so as to bring about his purposes for good: the good of his people and the glory of his name. We don’t need to be able to explain in detail how God does that. It may remain a mystery how he is sovereign and humans are morally accountable — that kings mean evil and God means it for good (Genesis 50:20). But we submit to what the Bible teaches. God is greater than we are.

So, in answer to Dan’s final question, the role that God is playing in geopolitics this very day is the role of an absolutely sovereign, all-righteous, all-wise, all-good God. Kings rise and fall at God’s decree. “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me . . . saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose’” (Isaiah 46:9–10). The kings who handed over their power to the beast are no less under God’s sovereign control than the kings who rule righteously. Our job is not to penetrate the mysteries of providence but to obey the revealed word of God.