The Noise of Thunder

 "Just how dangerous is he?"

"Compared to what - Bubonic Plague?"

"When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the living creature say 'come', and I looked and beheld a pale horse, and its riders name was death, and Hades followed behind him. And he was given dominion over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine and pestilence".  Revelation 6:7&8.

Crime that's hard to 'take it's measure... it's just all out war".

I've been searching for a while now for a fitting analogy of our current global predicament, and woke this morning to realise it's the Cohen Brothers movie, 'No Country for Old Men' (as quoted above).

The film begins with a dark character named Anton Chirgurn killing a man for no apparent reason and being arrested for it. Chirgurn is death incarnate, and quickly murders one of the police officers to facilitate his return to the outside world.

At the same moment, a local named Llewelyn Moss is out hunting in the outback and comes across the carnage of a drug exchange gone badly wrong where he finds a bag of two million dollars. He takes the money, but is being tracked by men connected to the exchange who see what he's done and want the money back. Moss eludes them, but the cartel hires Chirgurn to track him down and retrieve the money.

In the meantime, local Sheriff Ed Bell begins to try to track down the murderer, only to find himself chasing a growing number of dead people as Chigurn hunts down Moss. The sheer brutality of Chigurn's actions shocks the Sheriff into a state of genuine awe (shock and disgust) - he has never encountered such cold, detached killing.

Finally the Sheriff finds Moss dead, killed by Chigurn, who also turns his attention to ending those in the cartel who have sought to double-cross him, and to killing Moss' wife, who, clearly sees the immorality in his arbitrary executions.

The movie ends with two telling scenes - Chigurn facing the opening of his own demise, due to what can only be described as an 'act of God', and Sheriff Bell, visiting his cousin (a retired police officer) and then, now retired, talking with his wife about a dream, recalling older times, and his father, "going on ahead" to make a place for them.

The Sheriff's conversation with his cousin, Ellis, is particularly revealing. Two lawmen, discussing a moment when Eliis had been shot and disabled by another man, reveals just how powerless they are before such evil. The conclusion Ellis draws is that what haunts Bell is nothing new - this "country" is hard on people, and none of us can stop what's coming.

How does this impact upon us?

The story revolves around the awful cruelty that men do. The 'incident' in the desert is akin to the gain of function research that almost certainly lead to a lab-leak in Wuhan in 2019, causing the current Pandemic. Moss' "discovery" of the money is akin to the 'prize' that big Pharma "vaccines" that have become, supposedly, imperative to making life right, but in truth only attracting further death in their wake. The hunter's inability to give up the money, even though it will cost him his life echoes the global policy now becoming implemented in relation to the 'vaccines'  - nothing can be considered reasonable beside the obsession to have and employ this one thing, so any alternatives are dismissed (in the movie a cartel operative named Carson Wells seeks to give Moss this manner of opportunity before Chigurn finds him, but Moss rejects it). The Sheriff (as an officer of the law) represents the ineptitude of various institutions that have entirely underestimated what they are dealing with... only as we now follow the trail of carnage does the truth soberly unveil the genuine horror of what has overcome the world they thought that they knew.

In his conversation with Ellis, Sheriff Bell speaks of how he hoped that as he grew older, God would come into his life. The Sheriff understands that everything around him that is supposed to work is failing. His story is a rude awakening that the world is far more depraved, and therefore evil, than he could have imagined. His final unveiling of his dream suggests the one door of hope - God's intervention - has begun. Our hope is to 'hear' such a voice through Jesus Christ, to not trust in the means of the world, laying as they do in the purview of sin and death and manipulated by 'powers' that relent to such menace, but to live in accordance with His ways and His care.

"Loving" (trusting) what has been deemed evil cannot save us.

The Pale Rider is at work, so we must turn to God alone.