I do not often post here along the lines that follow, but want to pull together a few threads as I anticipate there will be a highlighting of where things are headed. Change is constant, and as someone added, and ‘constant change is here to stay’ and to that phrase needs to be added ‘but constant change does not happen at a constant rate’. There are times when change increases in pace and this seems to be the situation we are entering.
Background:
Around two years ago I was praying and suddenly saw (not praying in the direction of what I saw) that there was coming a time when the global population was going to be reduced drastically – cannot say the number but I suggest by a billion or so. Currently there are great losses but the overall population continues to grow… but this was different – a ‘before’ and a marked different ‘after’ figure. (I noted a couple of days ago that Bill Gates warned that AI has the potential to kill 1 billion in the foreseeable future.)
I sensed the great reducton was related to famine, natural events that were in the main triggered by climate issues, climate issues themselves, viruses that spread with no medical respnse (not one and not variants one of another but different viruses) and significant military conflicts. (Since then a number have warned of imminent war. Roger Mitchell has made a response to those warnings with a perspective that pushes into a response that continues to seek ‘the common good, especially among the poor and marginalised’. I do suggest it as a ‘must read’:
https://rogerhaydonmitchell.wordpress.com/2026/09/27/wars-and-rumours-of-wars/.)
Over a somewhat longer time frame I see the years 2020 – 2040 as being a season when there could be a turning either way. In other words we have opportunity for there to be sufficient push for a new day, and one that is very different to the one we are in now. What has been is not here to be restored.
We have been living through gloablly visual elements:
1989 (9/11 – European date format). Berlin wall: east / west issue.
2001 (9/11 – US date format). Twin towers – trade centres.
2008 – financial crash but there was no true reset.
2020 – COVID and a call for a global reset. But in society and in the church there was always the hope of getting back to normal. I have documented a dream related to what could have taken place in that decade leading up to the 2020 when all the façades were opened up but they closed down again because of a dependence on the familiar that ‘brings things back to where they were and restores the status quo’. ‘Back to normal’, the ‘good old days’etc. all stand in the way of forward movement meanwhile the old world has gone, not to come back.
The ‘church’ as the counterpart to empire has been complicit on this ‘back to normal’, so the very means of effective change had no authority to bring about any level of change. Deception does not kick in when one realises one took the wrong road, the ‘wake up moment’ simply indicates that a wrong path was taken somewhere back on the journey.
In 2022 I had an uprecedented two weeks of conflict with powers that I saw early on had a strategy of total destruction. I thought it was a strategic release at the time, but probably more see it now as it has always been a way the demonic works. It had a personal and a corporate application. I termed it ‘the four waves’ when I wrote about it at the time as there were four distinct related movements to it. Below is what I wrote at the time:
Perhaps the early part of that encounter has value in recounting. The initial twin attack was that of jealousy and intimidation – both coming to remove a person / corporation from their place. Once that happened timing was thrown off – with either events coming too soon or the connection being missed because the moment had passed. The missing of timing was held in place through false wisdom. The provocation of ‘false wisdom’ is that it can be true wisdom in another situation, and can certainly appeal to Scripture, but in a gven situation is false.
When in Sicily (2025-26) I was able to enter a war room in heaven. The surpise was that there were no angels assembled in battle fatigues ready to go to war, but a small angel with a simple invitation – let’s go together to some key portals and plant some seed there. Heavenly strategy is not always impressive!
That background brings me to this point of time. The phrase ‘be the prophecy’ is ringing in my ear today. (Not a phrase original to me.) We might also term it ‘incarnate the reality’, or in the language of ‘seed’ a call to ‘sow where we want the world to go’. There will be many opportunities to turn the threats that are on the horizon. At the centre is that of the economy. Always! God or mammon; you will not be allowed to buy and to sell. (Not simply money but the colonisation of money so that those who comply prosper becomes the battleground.)
A new economy is needed – a major turning point of the advancement of empire was the stronger alignment of the banking system and war. Buying and selling need to give way to giving and receiving.
Meanwhile… we continue to get out of bed and connect with whoever we meet, and in that process corporate revelation will flow.
I teach two graduate engineering courses this fall. Both are ways to shift the future into something better and to bring it forward into the present. The background economy is a constant theme for us. How do you ask a manufacturer to move to a circular or donut approach when they are situated within a linear, wasteful economy? How do we decarbonize our supply and demand for energy when companies and politicians push and facilitate fossil fuels and energy guzzling AI data centres? Those are just a couple of questions my engineer students are grappling with this fall as we seek a more equitable and climate mitigated/adapted world.
It is useful to understand our history in order to plot a future forward. Today is Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada – a day when we all remember and reflect on the history of residential schools for indigenous children, those who died and never returned home, and those who survived. It is a time to think of the systems – economic, political, theological, and social that set up such a situation in the first place.
And that tells us to be wary about things that come our way and ask questions. There are a lot of questions about AI and moral intent right now. History helps us here. A new book by a graduating Stanford student, Theo Baker (How to rule the world, 2026), shows how corrupt the school is in partnership with venture capitalists and the leaders of silicon valley. There is an invitation-only course on ‘how to rule the world’ (name of the course) in which 12 chosen students (Bill Gate’s daughter has been in the course, I believe) are taught how to extract value from other human beings. All through the Stanford education students are showered with tech money simply for the possibility of an innovative idea. And students are taught ethics have no place in their future.
Another new book out ‘Valley of Death, How Big Tech is Fueling the Future of War’ by Sharon Weinberger, 2026, chronicles who are the leaders of Silicon Valley, where they come from and what they believe and how connected they are to violence and war. They believe they are gods and some like Elon Musk (a grifter if there ever was one) have been worshipped as innovators and leaders. Undeservingly. In an interview I saw a clip of one of them declaring that he had no problem with building a nuclear bomb or a fusion bomb. Normally these weapons have been built and managed by state polities. But these folks along with the rise in drone warfare (weapons for anyone really) moves much of that destructive capacity into private hands.
These folks are all for the collapse of civilization from any number of sources. And yes, many people, especially the low income and those without resources, will be harmed.
However, another researcher I have recently read in Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp, addresses the fall of civilizations and notes that ultimately it is the common people who survive and thrive. Why? Because warfare is really elites fighting over resources. Eventually the elites kill one another or get run out of town by non-elites. In the end, normal people shift around, move, populate new places, revive old ones, do what they must and get on with life. Economics and politics become more equal, at least for a while. The cost of collapse is high but the results may be positive. The book reviews the history of civilizational collapse in order to reach its conclusions.
The total transformation of our climate, globally, means all of the systems we built on the assumption of a stable climate for the past 10,000 years cannot hold. Bits and pieces of them might but the systems as a whole cannot. Capitalism, patriarchy, imperial style church systems, our top down education systems, our relationship of extraction with the planet. None of it will hold. So what comes next? And who leads it?
A billion deaths is a moral issue. It means the elites and those who support them do not care about others and their well-being. It means they prefer death over life if it makes them feel powerful. So where are each of us in that? Are we supporting the powerful or challenging them? Little actions, done daily, are the key.
Thanks Anne… as per normal your comment carries more comment than my post! Deeply appreciated.
I’m not really an alarmist, heck I live in the 51st State of the USA known as “Alarma”…(let the reader understand), but in the last few days there are very concerning reports coming out of a Nation not know to be humanity friendly…basically “the plague” has quarantine about 6 hospitals in the Siberia area…this is quite concerning to folks who are experts in bio-warfare…apparently the official statement (at this time) was a lab worker dropped a test tube of something and now we have an entire region under serious lockdown…which is saying quite a lot coming from a regime that doesn’t give out a lot personal freedom to begin with.
When you are putting guards at the walls inside of walls you know something very bad has escaped.
There is a rumor of a plague version that has been modified to kill you if you take antibiotics.
I’m not sure we need a devil anymore, we’re starting to outperform him…and this is with no AI.
As always Mark – thanks.
‘We’ are the enemy? Maybe we need to rediscover how to love the enemy? And AI is simply in ‘our own image’.
Tomato Economy (n.)
An economy in which enough refuses to behave properly.
It begins when a tomato leaves one pair of hands without an invoice attached.
This causes immediate concern in systems built on scarcity, valuation, ownership, measurable return, and the deeply held conviction that nothing good should move unless someone has first worked out the margin.
The tomato economy is not barter, because barter is still keeping score.
It is not charity, because charity can leave the architecture of power entirely untouched.
It is not self-sufficiency, because nobody is sufficient unto themselves, whatever the homesteading catalogue suggests.
It is a small and cheerful failure of mammon.
A glut appears.
Someone has too many tomatoes.
Someone else has plums.
Another person has bread.
Someone has a table.
Someone has time.
Someone turns up hungry.
And before anybody can convene a strategic working group on resource allocation, dinner has happened.
The scandal is not that goods are exchanged.
The scandal is that equivalence begins to break down.
A bag of tomatoes becomes milk.
Milk becomes cheese.
Cheese becomes supper.
Supper becomes story.
Story becomes belonging.
Belonging refuses to appear on a balance sheet and is therefore regarded with suspicion.
The tomato economy has no objection to money. It simply declines to believe money is the most intelligent thing in the room.
It asks different questions.
Not: What is this worth?
But: Who could use this?
Not: What do I get back?
But: What happens if this keeps moving?
Not: How do I secure enough?
But: What if enough is something we recognise together?
This is why tomatoes are dangerous.
They ripen without permission, arrive in unreasonable quantities, resist long-term hoarding, and become increasingly urgent if ignored.
They are badly behaved assets.
Leave them on the vine too long and they split.
Store too many and they rot.
Give them away and, inexplicably, people start giving things back.
This is how systems get destabilised.
Theologically, the tomato economy lives somewhere between manna, loaves and fishes, Acts 4, John 21 and the unnerving tendency of Jesus to keep feeding people before checking whether they have contributed appropriately.
It is an economy of gift without innocence, abundance without denial, and provision without fortress.
It does not pretend there is no scarcity.
It simply refuses to let scarcity become god.
Empire says: secure the supply.
Mammon says: price the supply.
Fear says: hide the supply.
The tomato economy says: bring another chair.
Sometimes prophetic imagination looks very dramatic.
Sometimes it looks like carrying tomatoes across a field and coming home with plums.
Tagline: An economy where enough becomes visible when it moves.
B****y awesome. Anyone… a toast to the tomato… and pull up a chair also?