People cannot be told. They must be shown. But how long will they shown? How much must be destroyed before it is enough? What are the conditions that will trigger the order to advance? I must confess I don’t know.
I do have a concern that reason might miss the time. Reason can easily take the plans of God to manage them. Reason says, “I’ve got this now. I can see what needs to happen.” But it is always a mistake to think that what began in the spirit can be finished up by the flesh. If the plan comes from God, then human reason must be subjected to the will and wisdom of God right to the end, and all counsel must be weighed against the counsel of heaven. If it is not, the plan will fail from a human standpoint. God will still get what He ultimately wants, but the price for us will be much greater in terms of time and blood.
Socialist NAZI Germany was a classic example of what happens when good men let reason stop their feet. The whole world was shown evil on an ever-increasing scale, and the nations did nothing to intervene, reasoning that the price of intervention was too high when in fact they were still at the bargain table. By the time anyone woke up to the need to stop it, millions had already perished under horrible circumstances, and it would take the deaths of millions more to bring it to an end.
Evil lays compound interest on time. That interest never goes away or becomes less but always accumulates. When is it reasonable to take action? It depends on the price you are willing to pay, but people lose sight of how great that price can become when they drag their feet, trying to avoid paying a lesser one.
Good men are fighting a war I cannot see, and to this point many of my hopes have been delayed by their patience. I’m okay with that, and I understand that things I do not know affect what they can do and when they can move. I would not presume to counsel them on how to conduct their battles from my armchair, but I would encourage them not to stumble at the end.
It can seem like it is already too late, and yet I do not think we're anywhere near that point for a number of reasons. I see other parallels to socialist Germany because they are using the playbook the NAZIs developed there. At that time their methods succeeded, but it isn't going well on this second go because the times are much different. For one thing the good guys got to the bottleneck of history first. The new NAZIs were undermined before they started, and they were pushed into doing things before they were ready. This time resistance is not futile because people are awakening, and the devices of the NAZIs only work to fuel the flame. (If their minions can throw around that word, so can I.) They have not been able to crush dissent out of existence, only creating more with their oppression, and their paid-for underlings are so used to an easy ride that they cave to pressure when people don't get tired or give up.
I debated whether to make this post. It wasn't aimed at anyone here, and it wasn't an expression of my own doubt or impatience. I just didn't want "them" to miss a cue from too much debate about when to proceed, but looking back it does seem rather presumptuous to have a nobody like me urging them to be mindful of things they surely already know. On the other hand, we humans can get distracted and sidetracked because we are human, and it's not a bad thing to have reminders to be careful.
In any case, God is reported to be running the show, and that makes every other point hardly worth considering. He doesn't think like we do, and He exists beyond time (which was a constraint He placed only upon this creation). No time is too late for Him, and it helps to remember that. Jesus deliberately waited until Lazarus died before He went to Bethany because He wanted to do a greater miracle, and there are many, many other recorded examples of God surprising people when they thought all was lost.
How late is too late? As I said, I don't know, but considering what God is able to do, my judgment in the matter is pretty much useless. There might be a lot of this roller coaster left to ride, or the ride might over sooner than we think. I do think there are still some plunges ahead that will scare people who aren't grounded in the truth, but we can go through that, if we must, because we're not going back to the gate where we came in.