Dress Rehearsal

Or Is This Getting Real?

Image from Grok

If God has a surpassing beauty, the devil appears as a hideous red dragon… God rules through his Christ. So also the dragon has an earthly organ through whom he carries out his malevolent designs. He calls forth a beast… In contrast with the Spirit inspired, prophetic Church that tells the truth about God and does not lie, the state religion…gains the title of “false prophet.” (Paul A. Rainbow, The Pith of the Apocalypse, Chapter 5)

Trinity Sunday is coming up. Christians proclaim the full revelation of One God in the mystery of Three Persons, The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. Find a faithful church this Sunday and hear it preached.

The final book of the Christian Bible, The Revelation to John, uncovers the counterfeit Trinity of the devil, the beast and the false prophet, come to oppose the true God with deception that seduces the human race to worship evil.

Christians argue about how to interpret The Revelation. Some claim to have figured it out as a code for things to come. Others say that scholarship shows it to be about events that happened way back when. Many argue that it has no time reference, but is symbolic expression of the struggle between good and evil.

Some years ago, I started preaching about The Revelation as all three. Yes, some of its content is about events during the Roman Empire. Yes, it provides powerful images of the fight between good and evil that can be overlayed on many periods of history. Yes, it points toward a literal final conflict between the true and false Trinities, ultimately bringing forth the new creation in which evil is banished and the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matthew 13:43), and, He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Revelation 21:4).

The Revelation does contain references to Roman persecution of the Church, likely in the reign of Nero. But it does so with ideas and images expressed centuries before in Judaism’s Book of Daniel, the Prophet Ezekiel, and other Scriptures. There are indeed persistent symbols and language that express the struggle between good and evil in which God’s people are constant combatants and casualties.

So when the symbols seem to line up and people wonder, "Are we in the last days?”, I caution them to think that it might be a dress rehearsal. Dramatic and traumatic events unfold throughout human history, often leading people to think that The Revelation is in literal fulfillment. But just as John’s vision shares elements of Daniel’s, our time can share elements of their times, and Daniel, John, you, and I can share in dress rehearsals of the final conflict to come.

Paul Rainbow (quoted above) puts it this way,

Assuming some Christians of Smyrna suffered imprisonment and a few became martyrs, like Antipas at Pergamum (Rev. 2:10,13), admittedly they did not participate in the final tribulation that awaits the church. But their ordeal in the 90s and that of the end-time martyrs are of a piece, in significance if not in scale, and for their endurance they will receive the same crown. (Rainbow, Op. Cit., Chapter 4)

How do we know if it is a dress rehearsal or the real deal? We don’t, until we reach an outcome that is temporary (that’s the dress rehearsal) or eternal (the real deal). But we won’t know in the midst of it, because they both feel the same.

Now let me go out on a limb…

Image by Grok

I sense the false Trinity (devil, beast, false prophet) in current events. This might be a dress rehearsal, or it might be the real deal. Won’t know ‘til it’s done.

The devil — the father of lies, the deceiver, the schemer, (and many other vile things), is always at work. I don’t need to elaborate much. God inspired the Apostle Peter to warn of it,

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. (1 Peter 5:8-9)

The beast — politics has become, to borrow Paul Rainbow’s description of the beast, an earthly organ through whom (the devil) carries out his malevolent designs.

Friendships and families are being shattered by political opinions. Some studies in the U.S. show young men and women less able to bond and build families because of politics. Although overall violent crime rates are falling, political violence is becoming more normalized and justified.

And of course the politics themselves are enabling great evil. So much money flows into Washington DC that numbing amounts are taxed, contributed, borrowed and spent no matter which party wins elections. Staggering amounts are taken by fraud against programs put in place to help the vulnerable, including people with special needs, the sick, and even the dying. The youngest Americans are being frieghted with a national debt burden into the trillions of dollars.

Although the problems persist under administrations from both parties, partisanism refuses to see the complicity of one’s own “side” and pins all blame on “them.” Jesus warned that this will be a symptom of the end times (and thus of dress rehearsals along the way),

And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. (Matthew 24:10)

Both sides rightly point out arbitrary and even authoritarian actions by recent presidents, ideological decisions by courts leaning left or right, and the most fringe statements by legislators. But the pointing out is not of the problem as a whole, only its excercise by “the other side.” This is clear in 2026 with both “sides” engaged in “redistricting” efforts to shrink the other party’s potential representation in Congress.

Recently, a network newscaster (the beast builds collusion between institutions to make them serve political agendas) expressed offense at the (once) very American idea that human rights are God given rather than granted by the state.

You can probably add plenty of your own examples of how politics is pushed into every venue — education, sports, performing arts, medicine, you name it.

The false prophet — the ultimately incoherent red/green mashup, expressed in nonsensical declarations of alliance, harnesses political philosophy and religion hostile to the true God. It gives ideas that draw people toward coercive politics (the action of the beast) and thus the purposes of the devil.

It is difficult to speak about Islam. Americans, rightly, see freedom of religion as God-given (and Jesus never coerced belief). There should be no civic objection to Muslims exercising their religion and participating in American life… until any of their practices deprive neighbors of rights.

And deprivation of rights is what the red/green movement teaches and exercises with grotesque anti-semitism in state funded institutions,

UCLA’s tolerance of antisemitism reached a flash point in April 2024 when masked demonstrators erected an encampment outside of Royce Hall and slapped, kicked, beat with sticks, doused with pepper spray, and knocked unconscious Jewish and Israeli students. During this time, occupiers formed “human phalanxes” to block Jewish and Israeli students from entering academic buildings.

One has to race to find news articles about other red/green (especially green) attacks on free speech, free assembly, and other rights, because the articles are taken down or are “no longer available” when located on search engines.

Another glaring omission has been detailed coverage of what the Islamic regime in Iran teaches and why depriving it of nuclear weapons is in the world’s best interest. The regime instituted by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 (interestingly another exercise in red/green alliance… after which the reds were purged) was criticized by other prominent Islamic leaders for its — frankly — zealot cult belief system. The Islamic leaders of Iran believe that their Mahdi (akin to Jewish and Christian concepts of Messiah) has been alive for several hundred years, but is invisible. The Mahdi will appear in the Iranian city of Qom, and the world will submit to Islam. AND faithful Muslims can MAKE THIS HAPPEN by waging a war with the unbelievers. Yeah, that belief system needs nukes.

This is not talked about, even by secular liberals who at least used to oppose nuclear proliferation, but in the red/green movement are more concerned with… with what?

The beast of politics and the red/green false prophet have little in common except the devil’s hatred of Christianity. Some would say the false Trinity hates “The West,” but the West itself has grown increasingly cold if not hostile to Christianity too, mocking it in popular entertainment or distorting it to endorse right or left politics. It’s Westerners who make up the red that allies with the green.

Back to Trinity Sunday and proclamation of the true God.

The Trinity is not an obscure doctrine. It is the revealed reality of God who is above, alongside and within us. It is the proclamation of God who loves, saves and makes holy, not the Islamic deity of “pure will” who, like a desert wind, blows through and wrecks stuff just to show that human endeavor is vanity.

The Trinity is a revelation to many people in many places and cultures, not a secret message to one prophet.

The Trinity is not a new moral code (as if the world needed yet another one imposed), but the disclosure of God’s favor for humanity and the whole cosmos in creation, salvation, and renewal that will bring eternal life in love, joy and perfect peace.

The God revealed and proclaimed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has been worshiped by Christians in all cultures, under all political systems (even hostile ones); by Christians as the majority anchor of culture or as a marginalized group within a culture; by Christians with political power and Christians under oppression.

Worshipers of the Trinity practice the vulnerability of Christ, as the nations we influence are the ones with religious tolerance, and don’t need to ban the practice of other faiths (as is done in most Islamic nations).

It’s getting late, and I’m bone tired from a long work day and health needs at home. I didn’t really want to write this stuff, which is a magnet for snark and condescension from our red/green betters. But I think I felt like Jeremiah,

If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. (Jeremiah 20:9)

Christians, it’s not about who’s in DC, consequential as that might be for our comfort or misery in this short life. It’s about the God who made, loves and saves us.

Preach, worship and proclaim the Trinity. That’s the dress rehearsal for eternity. God is the Father. God is the Son. God is the Holy Spirit. One God, to whom be all glory and honor, world without end. Amen.