he will give you into our hand

There are many “radicals” and “revolutionaries” who shout and post in our time. There will almost certainly be even more after the dust settles on American election season. But despite all the language and imagery cribbed from genuine, century-old revolution winners, we have not seen and we will not see from these types anything resembling real revolutionary activity.

I’ve written about a few reasons for this, but the most important reason is that they tremble before the power of the state.

As the processes of competition and technological advancement have continued to congeal more and more capital into a few gargantuan firms, so they have led to the central state gaining an even greater share of society’s collective capacity for violence.

The Russian revolutionaries were men carrying rifles rebelling against other men carrying rifles. They had to be aware of Tsarist spies and mail-interceptors.

A revolutionary today in the United States must plan to face not only rifles, but tanks, drones, cruise missiles, and helicopters. They would need to thwart government intelligence in a world where microphones and cameras are found in almost every room and in almost every pocket. Our crop of “radicals” and “revolutionaries” will continue to shout and post and (maybe) read, but they will, I assure you, do nothing, because they do not really think that they can win against what are by far the most powerful state apparatuses that have ever existed.

Revolution will nevertheless come, and it will come from disciples of the Lord Jesus, who will act against the behemoth states and who will, amid the laughter of a million “realistic” naysayers, emerge triumphant.

Christians will be the ones to do something because they are sons of David, the shepherd who, while the warriors of Saul cowered before Goliath, said without any fear,

who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?

The Christian is the son of the bold youth who refused to even wear armor into his combat with the terrifying warrior, who trusted that his God and his experience killing lions and bears in the sheepfields would suffice for him.

The Christian loves the prospect of confronting an obviously more mighty foe, because,

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

Yes; the leftists will do nothing, because they await a strong, organized proletariat that will never materialize. They await the force of the masses who will at no point in the foreseeable future have the courage or motivation to upend the status quo.

The unstoppable historical force they await will come in the revolutionaries of the Lord Jesus, who will set out with nothing, maybe without even the ten loaves and ten cheeses which David brought to the front. The force will come in the revolutionaries of the Lord Jesus and in the power of their Father, in whose name David declared what was to come, when he said,

I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hand.

The Lord of hosts: this archaic-sounding name for our God has lost none of its relevance. That this is true will be shown when His hand, working through the small, poorly-armed sons and daughters of David, strikes down the Powers and Principalities of this world, when He delivers all authority into the hands of lowly shepherds.