The Cosmic Battle Against the Multigenerational Family

My dad just saw his great-grandson!

He lived long enough to see a whole new generation of his line come into the world.

At our next Sabbath dinner, he will sit at a table with four generations of his family.

We get a vivid description of the good life from Psalm 128 where we read “may your sons be like olive shoots around your table…may you live to see your children’s children…thus is the man blessed who fears the Lord.”

My dad is that man.

The ancient Hebrew Scripture describes this moment as peak blessing.

But I must take a moment and reflect on how rare this is today.

In the years to come fewer and fewer patriarchs and matriarchs will get to experience this blessing.

All the demons of hell seem arrayed to prevent this from happening for you, for your father, for your son.

• The skyrocketing divorce rate

• The abortion of helpless infants

• The normalization of same sex marriage

• The permanent sterilization of trans boys and girls

• The unplanned childlessness of career-focussed women now unable to find a spouse or ever get pregnant

These are all forces designed to prevent the multiplication of family lines.

Our enemy will promote any ideology that will prevent what my father just experienced.

But he failed in our case.

• He failed to cause a divorce in our line.

• He failed to convince us to murder our own children

• He failed to convince any of us to submit to voluntary sterilization.

• He failed to cause us to value work identities over family identities.

The result is now we have an unbroken line of four generations loyal to the Kingdom of God and God-willing we are preparing to raise hundreds more.

We know the spirit of Pharaoh is relentless at stopping the multiplication of God’s people.

We know what we’re up against.

That’s why we’re all rallying around our family’s newest son Elijah Michael.

Elijah because the spirit of Elijah is the spirit of the multigenerational father. “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers…” (Malachi 4:5-6).

Michael because he throws down his enemy, “Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world…” (Revelation 12:7-9)

We don’t know what battles are yet to come and what casualties our family will suffer but I’m just grateful that for this moment in time, I can look at our enemy and simply say—not today.