The crazy in our world seems to multiply every day. I think that is exactly the math Jesus warns us about in Matthew 12:43-45:

When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.

I think this was specifically directed to the Jews of Jesus’ day. Those who rejected Messiah. The ‘end of the world’ was the end of the Jewish order set up by Moses. This was the world where God chose a people for himself, a people of the land. He put them in the land to be a priestly people to the nations. For the most part they were not, but in a real sense they were, Jesus the Messiah is the perfect priest for every tongue, tribe and nation. He fulfilled their desinty.

This is the old world Paul is talking about in Galatians 3:23-29:

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

The Mystical Nativity. Sandro Botticelli. c. 1500.

In the old world the law was the school master of the Jews, keeping them in line. But then they had to grow up, to be come adults. They were then to be ruled by the Spirit, within. You no longer need the nun with the ruler slapping you on the wrist. You rule yourself, make judgements for yourself and act in the world by your spirit. But the rebellious child becomes multiplied in rebellion as an adult. Without the tutor there to keep him in line, he runs into the arms of evil. Today, the Jews are still trying to live like in the olden days. They carry around their school marm with them. It looks ridiculous, it is ridiculous, they are supposed to be adults. This is a new world. But they keep trying to live like the old world.

But what about the gentiles in the old world? They are often referred to as the sea. In one sense the Jews under the tutor of the Law, were to be the tutors of the nations. They were a priestly people, a mediator between God and the other nations. God sent them into Egypt and then Babylon, which became the two centers of ancient wisdom. Even the Greeks got much of their wisdom from lost sources in Egypt. The world was watching the Jews. But in general the pagan world was a world of idolatry. And as Paul says in I Corinthians 10:20-22:

No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

The old world was ruled by demons. When the Satan offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world, he and his demons ruled them. They ruled like a tyrant. The peoples of the earth were enslaved to sin and death. Jesus, broke this curse, and freed all these peoples. But this is a new world. We are no longer in the nursery, now we are adults and we can do real damage. We get the idea from the Flood and Babel that God was limiting mans’ ability. So that we didn’t destroy ourselves. We were children. But now we have been baptized with Christ, Pentecost has come and Babel has been reversed. This is a great blessing, we now have more freedom to glorify God. To be truly human on this earth, governed by the word written on our hearts, the Spirit. But what about those turning back?

You can’t go back to the old world. Once the house is swept, going back means seven times worse. The old world tyrants would never question hierarchical authority structures. That was how they ruled. The demons were counterfeiting what they saw God do. They couldn’t imagine mankind freed and ruled by the Spirit. They would not have dared question sex. Even sodomy was generally frowned upon, and they mostly worshipped fertility. It just makes sense, you need people to rule, people to kill. And endless cycle of death. In a sense the demons were geographical, and their kingdoms were competing with God’s people. Men lived in fear, and would not dare have the audacity to commit the evils we see today. We see this with many paganisms, even today, Mohammedans live in fear. It prevents a lot of evil, but it is not man living up to his full potential. It is beneath his dignity. Once Jesus opened that door and we walked into the new world, going back means a much worse place. As Peter says in 2 Peter 2:20-22

For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”

I get the idea from the first part of I Peter, that the work of Christ on the cross was beyond what the angels could imagine. “angels desire to look into”. There was a good too amazing for them to consider. Man will judge the angels, our capacity is greater than the demons. We have free will in a way that they do not. But the same goes for demons in the opposite direction. We are now capable of evil far greater than they can imagine. Christendom, as adults, ruled by the Spirit, reached great heights. And now we have further to fall. We undermine sex, family, authority, language and on and on, all seven times worse than we were before. We dive into evils that would make our pagan ancestors blush. When you are ruled by the Spirit, you take for granted that what is within is good. You have a conscience and you act by it. But when that is not the case, and you look within, the depth of the darkness is seven times darker. The fields were once rich for the harvest. But when you become bored, inured to the blessings of Christ and take them for granted, you begin to experiment with questioning them, with tearing them down. All the capability of man for good turned towards evil. This is what we read in the news every day.

The worst part is that we have a niche carved out in the church for accepting this. We call it pluralism and dare to say it is good. We inventy silly eschatology about everything getting worse, as if Christ on the earth was made to destroy it. We insist that people do have a right to curse God. Where did they get this right from? We say silly things like “I don’t want a theocracy”. We as children of the king, princes, sit back and allow parts of his kingdom, bought with his blood, on the cross, to be invaded and ruled by these fools. We are his hands and feet. We are to judge, binding and loosing as we see fit. The gates of Hades are a joke, we need to knock them down. We need to stop handing over our children to be seven times the servant of Satan. We need to enlist them in the good work of building the kingdom for many generations. We need to get our story straight and stop participating in the crazy.