by Zach Kincaid

Conspiracy is a word used to identify the layers underneath what we see and understand. Often it signals an illegal or illegitimate endeavor, one that threatens to call out someone or something if proven true or believed by enough people. But conspiracy also means the alternative, the inconspicuous, the outlying, the unexpectant undertow to the riptide, to the party line, to the clowns distracting the audience members on the surface.

Unlike the gods in Greek and Norse mythology who wager on outcomes, who make deals with dwarves for secret weapons to secure an uncertain future, and who protect their own turf and reputation among the other gods at great costs to ethical codes, the God of the Bible has a purpose and a plan that is determined already, a love that is expressed inside his demand for justice, and, ultimately, an exit strategy that actualizes redemption in his own flesh and blood.

He made us, human beings, from the dirt of Earth, and he breathed in his very own breath to spring forth life, will, animation, and purpose within us. So, from the very beginning, God conspires with his human creatures, for, as you might know, conspire is broken into con and spire, which means together and breathed, respectfully. God breathed together with humans to give life, and in Jesus, life more abundantly.

But why conspire with humans? The short, non-substantive answer: we may never fully know, but he does. The longer answer needs to establish what we understand about the meta-narrative that takes us back to the time when Earth had no form. Jesus says about this pre-creation time, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). Taking a bit more poetic license, we assume Lucifer’s fall is broken by some collision with our formless blob of Earth, and sometime after God speaks into the void for a week, an idea begins to germinate in the mind of the fallen Lucifer. Certainly, his conspiracy is an evil one, demanding the trappings of disguise and the bending of Truth. In the second fall from God’s goodness, Lucifer convinces a serpent to join his rebel angels in a long-shot effort to rework the seven days of creation, pulling them away from their creator. With the serpent taking sides, the primary target is now in view: the creatures made after God’s own image. Bend them away from the light and darkness will form itself.

When Paul says, “We don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12), he is speaking about the conspiracy between God and humans. From the earliest days until the present, God is in want of one thing: reclaiming his creatures – the imago dei humans – and changing our rebel hearts and minds back into Eden folk. In a word, he could speak and own both our obedience and devotion. In a word, he could right every wrong and reel back any sense of choice. We would have no recourse but to obey. However, our understanding of God’s providence is one that allows room for dissent, or at least a sense of dissent, without changing the ultimate plans of God – for us, for the world, and even for Lucifer.

Our understanding of Satan and his legions of angels are similar to our freedom to choose. Somewhere in the basement library of Heaven, we might find the annals that tell about the time when one-third of the angels chose to rebel. We know that at a point in Heaven’s history, God created the angelic hosts to be messengers and guardians, among other-worldly duties, I’m sure. This first fall introduced a parasite to the perfect order; feasting on it and throwing it back up, Lucifer manufactured an altered version called evil. His first trick: to manipulate his fellow angels to rebel with him, and for all we can account for, his second trick turned the serpent his way, and his third enticed Eve and Adam to give up their unique position. And it is unique. We don’t hear any echo of God rushing to save Lucifer and his thugs; we don’t catch any glimpse of God adjusting the serpent’s punishment, but we do see him walking to find his humans, clothing them with a first kill in the natural order, and, yes, casting them out, but not without a promise, not without a hope. It must be a very thin moment in history as God waves goodbye, packs up Eden, and allows Lucifer to win the day. But the battle is the Lord’s.

I John 3:8 tells us that, “the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil,” namely sin. I Peter 5:8-9 gives us a picture of Satan as an alternate lion of Judah, one that roams around in want to devour us. Paul says that we ought to be about forgiveness (and, we can assume, the other traits and actions of a Christian) so, “Satan may not outwit us” (2 Corinthians 2:11). By outwitting us, we might turn to Jesus’ experience in the wilderness as he prepared for his ministry. In contrast to some interpretations of wilderness, it is not a place to run from God but toward him; it’s a place to find Him as you are tested by the elements and natural need for food, water, and shelter. In this intense few weeks, Jesus encounters Satan, who, like the wager with Job, tempts him with sustenance apart from God, glory apart from God, and power apart from God. In essence, Satan tempts Jesus with what he himself fell for and fell into. Jesus, being the incarnate God, sees right through Satan’s schemes. After all, Lucifer, as an angel of light, is created by God for service in Heaven. It’s interesting that even here, in the wilderness account we find in the Gospels, and so many years since the beginning of Earth’s blossoming, God bestows enough grace even on Lucifer to invite him to a conversation. It is God setting a table in the shadowy valley, in the presence of the chief of enemies. Unfortunately, all Lucifer can muster up, like Tolkien’s Gollum, are the tricks of a broken, once hopeful creature.

More could be said about Lucifer, but the point here is simply to show him as the principal force fighting against God in all ways here on Earth. Revelation 12:9 says he is, “the deceiver of the whole world… thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” We can see his progressive power, and, on many days, what looks like victory. But God has conspired with humans – who followed in faith waiting for Messiah and who follow in faith believing in Jesus who is God incarnate now revealed – as the ones to bring about his new Heaven and new Earth. In all ways, God is a God of conspiracy.

Let’s trace some conspiracies through Scripture.

Remember Noah. God looks over the whole Earth and finds one guy who he conspires with, baptizing the world afresh. This is before the grand covenant with Abraham years later. Who knows how much information Noah even had about the one true God. The story is held together by two things: (1) a walking God; (2) and a willing human. We read in Genesis 6:9 that God walked with Noah. A few verses down, after God looks at all the corruption, he puts together a plan. However, the hook is that he doesn’t want to do it alone. Sure, I suppose he could drop a boat from heaven the same way he begins to cast fire down (think Moses at the sea or Elijah at the mountain), but he doesn’t do it. It’s also interesting that God says in 6:13 that he wants to end the corruption made by “all flesh”, namely the violence on the earth, and he says further, “I will destroy them with the earth.” He wants to use the earth as a weapon to destroy the people who keep twisting the good into an evil mockery. Noah builds the boat after strict guidelines and lets in the animals the same way, including a few more pairs of clean animals. Already we have important distinctions of the otherness we see later on when the law is given. Among all the human race, he is setting apart a people to be part of his effort to dismantle the powers in dark places, namely Lucifer and the angels.

With all their hopes dashed to have a child, Abraham and Sarah don’t know what to do next. It’s beginning not to matter that God came and said he’d make it happen. They are both so old, so it just can’t possibly occur now. Right? So often, we drop into the same slums when nothing seems to fit inside our reality. We begin to think outside of God’s promises. You can hear Sarah’s whisper because it echoes into our side of the tracks even today: “God must have meant something else. Why don’t you go out and make it happen yourself?” But God is patient. He wants us old and dried up, worn thin and without a thousand armies in our hearts and minds to battle against the Truth. Certainly, he wants us our willing submission but he also wants our submission to weakness. He is orchestrating the conspiracy moves and we are only the players on the chessboard to help catch the king of darkness and finally chain him in Hell forever and ever. In Abraham and Sarah’s case, God peels back time and allows them to conceive a son - exactly what he says he will do. He also breaks them out of tribal assumptions on what he demands, and instead provides a substitutionary ram, caught in the thicket, to rescue Isaac from death. Let’s not forget that God also deals grace to Ishmael and Hagar, the same grace he gave to Cain and will also give to Esau. Remember, the God of conspiracy is tracking with a particular people who he hopes will help rescue the world, or at least the people in the world, from the coming destruction.

With the story following the younger Jacob, God breaks conventions again and conspires with a man who no one counts for much. He seems like a loser for the start, working with his doting mom to deceive his blind dad. He makes his brother into a fool and then runs away like a coward. I tend to appreciate that he is later tricked into marrying a girl he doesn’t love and working a much longer time to finally marry the girl’s sister who he asked for in the first place. Two sisters as wives. That sounds like a mess. This is an aside, but collecting wives is never the plan. It’s clear in the original instructions that a man leaves his mother and a woman, her home, and the two become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). The math is not for a man to leave his mother and convince a bunch of women to be his wives and they all become one, nor the other way around. It’s sad to read, and this is for another article, that only a handful of people stick with the truth of Genesis. From what we know, the shortlist might include Abraham, Moses, Eli, Samuel, Boaz, and Hosea, though I’m sure I’m missing a few. Back to Jacob. Here’s someone God pursues. God opens Heaven in a dream. The rabbis suggest that Jacob saw the angels coming and going in preparations in the Promised Land. Jacob also wrestles an angel and gets a new name pinned for himself in the history books as Israel. Unlike Noah and Abraham, God demonstrates through Jacob that he owns the narrative, one being sown in the lives of people he chooses, even a liar and thief like Jacob.

Joseph is another unlikely hero, whose conspiracy includes entering Egypt masked as a slave, then as an accused criminal, before becoming Pharaoh’s right-hand man. Why? Just under the noses of the world power Egyptian dynasty, God rescues his chosen family from famine and begins to weave a larger story of redemption. In Joseph, we have a character arc that God will use again as we see him go from favored son to slave and back again. Little did anyone know at the time, the same arc would soon involve his whole family as they become a people, the Israelites.

Joseph dies and the Pharaoh changes. The famine becomes a mirage from the past and the Israelites are seen as both a threat and a source of labor. We don’t know when it gets dicey for God’s people, but it happens. We know that God sends Moses in the arms of Pharaoh’s daughter after nearly 400 years of growing despair and emptying hope in Egypt. Moses is both rescued from Pharaoh’s barbarism and also invited to participate with God’s most grand conspiracy since Noah - breaking the backs of the most powerful civilization on Earth and giving His people a story and a promise. That might be why God is so upset when the golden calf is rolled out as a replacement or Moses takes his vengeance out on a rock - he likes to move in mysterious ways and invites his followers to trust him. The tangible stuff of gold idols and acting out in our own strength are not in keeping with the conspiracy that frames his long-range plan. For this same reason, we see Joshua’s antics at Jericho, Gideon’s reduction of troops, the espionage of Esther, the barrenness of Hannah, the just to name a few.

The conspiracy is thick already, and I’ve only teased out the stories of Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. We could uncover so much more, stories like –

Samuel anointing David while Saul is still the rightful king of Israel, an act of terrorism that undermines the kingdom for the sake of righteousness;
Hezekiah praying to hold Jerusalem and 120,000 troops die the same night, sending the Assyrians home without conquest;
Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the mouth of exile’s bite, standing up for God’s Truth, and keeping alive the testimony of God’s work in the world';
Jonah entering Nineveh (finally) all alone with a grave message to one of the most powerful cities in the world.

Perhaps Job paints the most open example of the Ephesians 6:12 situation. The story records Satan approaching God with a proposition, almost a dare. “I bet if I take everything away from Job, he won’t want anything to do with you, God,” he says. What to do? Satan couldn’t forget about who held all the sovereignty so he had to ask, but on the omniscience front, I suppose he thought God would release that stronghold for the sake of the test. I don’t think he did. Instead, God knew full well that Job would not break as he knew Noah would build the ark and Abraham would leave Ur and Joseph would remain faithful and Moses would meet him on Sinai time and again. It must be the damage incurred with Lucifer’s fall, the head wound he sustains when he crashes into Earth’s gravity because he miscalculates God’s omniscience every time. We miscalculate it too. When we imagine Adam and Eve hiding in the shrubs or Achan hiding the gold under his tent or David covering up his sin, we see the same thing creep in. We say to ourselves, “Maybe God isn’t looking right now; maybe I can make a run for it; maybe he doesn’t care that much about me or what is right.” But, God wants us; he doesn’t need us. He wants us to work with him - to conspire together so to deactivate snares, to destroy strongholds, to know that darkness always cowers in his light.

We could also go further into conspiracy signs of nature – Noah’s rainbow, Moses’ parting sea, Joshua’s still-standing sun, Elijah’s magic fire, Elisha’s evil bear, Jonah’s big fish, Daniel’s quiet lions, and the Psalmists noisy stones and clapping trees. With all the buzzes and beeps, rattles and patters and purrs, God is bringing all of his creation into the conspiracy, and we are like Noah, ushering them into the lifeboat by his guidance and his ultimate purpose: once and for all, Lucifer and his angels will be sent hell, a place God created as their eternal home of torment.

But we’re not done. The greatest conspiracy ever seen happens under the arrogant auspices of the most expansive empire ever seen: Rome. Think about it. After more than 150 years since the Maccabees rekindled the flame in the Temple, here comes a series of angels and visions, strange happenings in the sky and in the womb of Mary as she carries God Almighty, the incarnate Heaven’s son for a nine-month journey to reclaim the kingship in Bethlehem in a whole different way. It’s as if he surveyed once again all the world, like he did with Noah and Abraham, and found one young woman willing and ready to rear up God himself. We see a conspiracy replayed in Elizabeth and Zechariah too, as the old and barren bring forth life anew. The exclamations of Simeon and Anna, two old-timers who were waiting, looking, hoping, go unnoticed in the busyness of everyday life when Mary, Joseph, and Jesus step into the Temple courtyard. Was the ailing Zechariah there or the young Nicodemus or Caiaphas who would later take up leadership? I wonder if anyone blind or lame overheard even a phrase from the aged Simeon – “…for my eyes have seen your salvation…” – as he held Jesus close in his arms. Perhaps in the bustling time of sacrifice, several of Jesus’ future disciples made the journey at a similar time with their families, or even young Saul clinging to every word of his teacher Gamaliel. We don’t know any of the other people in the immediate scene of Jesus at the Temple, but all of the above people are living and growing up at the same time. They will each play out their roles in the conspiracy that breaks every mold and turns the world right-side-up again - God incarnate came to die and conquer death with his resurrection, ascended now to the Father, who is coming to judge the living and the dead.

His first coming is recognized by so few who should have understood the signs. Instead, shepherds working fields and star-gazers from somewhere out east join the table set before them in a stable. Even King Herod (for alternative reasons, we know) believes the prophecy may be coming true. Why then did no rabbi see the signs or make the journey to nearby Bethlehem? The refrain in Revelation can certainly be applied here: “He who has an ear, let him hear…” They weren’t listening so they missed the whisper of God. “I’m about to do something new among you…” We know that conspiracies always start with whispers, but it’s hard to listen while you preach.

God is still a God of conspiracy. He is still a God who whispers, as he did with Elijah on the mountain and with Mary Magdalen in the garden. It is our task to listen and stand alert, with our lanterns burning. Everything before the common era pointed to one truth: Messiah is coming. Everything since Jesus’ ascension to Heaven is culminating into another truth: Messiah is coming again. What do we do with this knowledge?

Many churchgoers rationalize away apocalyptic talk altogether, but sometimes it’s far worse. Many don’t believe they are involved in any conspiracy at all, let alone one that brings judgment by fire.

Lucifer gets painted thin or ignored altogether as ownership for much of the world’s rot is given to sinful humans. “A devil?” they question, “Maybe, but I think that’s mostly a construct. We are our own devils.” (Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. - I Peter 5:8.)
They rely on commentary and not biblical texts to erase away any replay of a triumphal entry by Jesus in the skies. “People caught up together in the clouds to meet Jesus?” they smartly say, “Now, how does that even make sense? Coming back the way the disciples saw him leave with angel metaphor talk, don’t you know?” (Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. - I Thessalonians 4:17; Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. - Acts 1:11.)
They are so charmed by conserving the Earth – its glaciers and polar bears – they miss out believing a new Earth is even in play. “I think God is going to use what we have right here,” they say, “and why not? Isn’t it our job to usher in the kingdom of God and make sure the water is clean when it happens?” (For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. - Isaiah 65:17; But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. - 2 Peter 3:13; Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. - Revelation 21:1.)

Halfway truths are no truths at all. Instead of avoiding the conspiracy of God with humanity, we should embrace it. Like with any conspiracy, “we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (I Corinthians 13:12). Our instructions are to “abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming” (I John 2:28). And so, “Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be, has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (I John 3:2).

We must look and analyze the times, study and work diligently at whatever we are tasked to do, love God and love our neighbor always. In and out of crisis, we must humbly know that God is at work. We most always get on our knees if we want to kiss the sky. It is our God who pulls the strings. When pandemics or famines or natural disasters spread, it is for his purpose and in preparation for his arrival. The wicked and comfortably smug bite the ancient apple every day. They believe it’s their knowledge of good and evil that matters, their handy work that makes or breaks history. But our God laughs while all these egos rage and plot out ignorant and arrogant courses. Our God is still hovering over the deep, but his conspiracy is breaking through, closer each new created day. It is against everything Satan keeps building to fashion a god in his own image, but we know the end. I’m afraid he knows the end, but he hopes to thin out the streets of Heaven, COVID-19 style, and fill up the chains in Hell.

And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. …And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. - Revelation 20:10, 13-15