Something about the Bible I love but used to hate
When you read the Old Testament it is filled with references to kingdoms and people you have never heard of. Who are the Assyrians? What about the Babylonians? Gog, Magog, Nineveh, etc. Eventually I learned that although these people and kingdoms have long since turned to dust their spirit is still here. The great Babylon today does not refer to Iraq, it refers to the materialistic USA. So at first it is hard to figure out what God is talking about but that is a minor issue, it is fun to figure it out because in reality every word in the Bible is about Jesus, it is about us, it is about our heart, and sin, and grace, and God's love and salvation.
But here is what I love about all this. It is so easy to read about some great abusive kingdom, the Pharaoh of Egypt, or Nineveh's mistreatment of the Jews, or the vicious Assyrians, yet where are they today? Just dust. Yet in the midst of all this tiny Israel is still here! How? We had Roman Empire, Greek Empire, Babylonian Empire, Medo Persian Empire, one after the other "great" empires came and went and yet Israel is still here. That is the power of the word and the spirit of this word. Everything else is vanity, a great big statue that will become dust after a few hundred years.
To me this lesson is loud and clear. The church may seem small, insignificant. The deep state can boast of working for a hundred generations to seize power, of ruling the world for thousands of years, and yet here we are at the end of the age and everything revolves around the people of the book.