"Let's all get together." This is the thing you hear people say they want for the world. Togetherness. "Let's have an egalitarian view about everything where everybody's one."

The reality is when the world gets "together," it's so the people can rebel against God.

The collective voice of rebellion and insurrection is exactly what culminated in the crucifixion of Christ, and the persecution of His early followers, and that's only a foreshadowing of the greater confederacy of "the last days" that will be designed to completely dethrone God from the earth and set the Antichrist upon the throne in the temple, declaring himself to be God.

We live in the age when the voice of insurrection has been codified and made official. Man has officially declared his war against heaven, and just because that war's being restrained right now by the Dispensation of Grace, doesn't mean it's not coming.

After the Body of Christ is "Raptured out," the prophetic program broke off in the Book of Acts will pick up again and the nations of the earth will rage against God, joined by Israel in taking counsel together against the Lord.

This is exactly what we're told to expect in Psalm 2:1-3, which says, "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

"The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,
"Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us."

From Isaiah 57:19, we know that "the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt."

As my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.) explains it in an old sermon I have on tape, "The nations are raging. They're like the troubled sea that tosses to and fro and is up and down and is just throwing dirt everywhere. You ever wonder why you read the newspaper and it's all bad news? They just throw mud everywhere? Because there's an anger, there's a hostility, there's a rage in the hearts of man. And when you get them gathered together as nations, you know what they do? It comes out and the answer is hostility, enmity, wrath, rage."

When David writes, "Why do the heathen rage," he knows the answer and he's really saying, "You know why they rage? They rage because what they want to do is cast off His bands—cast them asunder and cast away His cords."

God has placed bands and cords on the nations of the earth to restrain them. Truth is what restrains error and God's put a bound around things with the Body of Christ just as He once did with Israel when He gave them His truth. That's why the Apostle Paul stresses that Believers, or members of the Body of Christ, are to be "the pillar and ground of the truth."

As Paul tells us in Romans 1:21, the very reason the heathen got to be heathen is "because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened."

They had a knowledge of God from the outset because God gave it to them and made sure they understood it, but rather than believing that knowledge and accepting it, they rejected it.

The word "vain" in the verse means empty and worthless in their thinking processes. It was error, not truth, filling their minds and their "foolish heart was darkened." The light went out. As Paul says, "Professing themselves to be wise they became fools." They went on human viewpoint, developing their own thinking process, and turned out the light of God.

"In Psalm 2, Israel is thinking like the Gentiles," explains Jordan. "When you reject God's word and you go on human viewpoint, you're going to begin to rage and the sinful heart of man is going to take over and the result is the kings of the earth, the Gentile rulers, 'set themselves against the Lord.' They want to be at war against God. All this foreshadows the great confederation and conference that will be evidenced in the 'last days.' "

Psalm 83, which contains the timely verse, "They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance," is about the nation Israel in the 'last days' as they face the Antichrist and the 10 federated kingdoms that come against them.

"You see the problem is they hate God and anything God's doing, and had it not been for interruption in the prophetic program with the Dispensation of Grace, this confederation that began to coalesce in the crucifixion of Christ, and then was focused on the 'little flock' in the early Acts period, would have led right on into those 'last days.' " says Jordan.

While Psalm 2: 1-3 gives the voice of man's rebellion and insurrection against God, it's in verses 4-6 that we're given God the Father's surprising reply. The passage reads, "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
"Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.
"Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion."

Here's God's creation in total rebellion against Him, shaking their little fists, saying, "Didn't you get the message? We don't want you! We declare war on you!," and God's just sitting in heaven laughing!

"I read that and I think, 'That's interesting. He doesn't even get up to answer,' " says Jordan. "When I was a kid, my dad taught me if you're sitting in a chair and a lady walks in the room, you get up. You stand up out of respect. If you just sat there, and didn't do anything, you weren't really impressed by the one coming in the room. God's not even going to get up to answer these people."

Jordan continues, "You read verses 1-3 and you think, 'Oh, man, God's going to really come get 'em—He's going to get wound up and come get 'em!' but it says, 'The Lord shall have them in derision.' The idea is, 'Oh, man, I gotta sit down this is so funny!' He looks at them and just laughs. He's not troubled by it at all. He's amused. What they're saying is absurd. It's futile. It's irrational."