Kim Jong Un speaks at memorial for North Korean soldiers killed fighting for Russia

Jeremiah 4 describes the theological pattern by which God permits distant nations to mobilize armies and press against other peoples as a consequence of human wickedness and the instability that attends nations who have abandoned righteousness. The original context is Babylon's advance on Judah, but the prophet's language deliberately casts it as a universal archetype: besiegers arising from distant lands, chariots like whirlwinds, ruin coming swiftly.

The plain grammatical-historical sense is that military coalitions forming across great distances are a recurring feature of a world under the weight of sin, and Scripture calls watchmen to name the pattern and call for repentance rather than political passivity.

North Korean soldiers — 'besiegers from a distant land' in the most literal geographic sense — have now died on European soil fighting for another nation's war of aggression, and their supreme leader consecrates their graves with ceremony.

This is precisely the pattern Jeremiah names: nations remote from one another drawn into cascading conflict, with rulers framing carnage as glory. The herald's task is not to predict outcomes but to declare what Scripture already sees — that such coalitions are signs of a world deeply in need of the peace that only the Prince of Peace can establish.

The second seal of Revelation 6 portrays a condition — not merely a single battle — in which peace is systematically removed from the earth and nations are given over to slaying one another. John's original audience would have understood this as the escalating warfare that characterizes the age between Christ's ascension and His return, with an intensification toward the end.

The plain sense is that multi-front, coalition-expanding conflict is a feature of this present age that will not diminish until the Lord Himself brings it to an end.

The Ukraine war has now drawn in North Korean ground troops, deepening a conflict that already involved NATO nations, Russia, and Iranian drone technology — a genuinely multi-national war expanding in scope.

This is the pattern the second seal describes: peace being taken progressively from the earth, not in a single moment but through the accumulation of alliances, memorial museums, and fresh graves on foreign soil. The Church watches, prays, and holds fast to the One who holds the scroll.

Proverbs 16:25 addresses the deepest self-deception available to human rulers: the confident pursuit of a course that appears righteous, honorable, or necessary, but whose end is destruction. The wisdom literature consistently applies this not just to individuals but to the counsels and campaigns of nations.

The verse requires no reinterpretation — its grammatical-historical sense is exactly what it says: a path that presents itself as right leads to death.

Kim Jong Un enshrines dead soldiers in a memorial museum, framing their deaths as honorable sacrifice in a righteous alliance — a way that seems right to a man, complete with ceremony, dirt, and nationalistic solemnity.

But Scripture is unmoved by the pageantry of tyrants. The end of that way is death — death for the soldiers sent, death for the peoples they fought against, and ultimately the self-consuming end that awaits every ruler who mistakes martial glory for wisdom.