And the ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the harlot and will make her desolate and naked, and will eat her flesh and will burn her up with fire (Rev 17:16)

One of the enduring lessons of scripture is that hatred will destroy those who weaponize it to achieve and maintain power. The Babylonian prostitute used hatred to attain dominance over the world and its systems of power, but ultimately those who she dominated hated her and eventually tore her to bits. Hatred ignites a conflagration of destruction upon all, including those who release it. The men who threw the three Hebrew boys into the fire were destroyed by it while God preserved his servants in the fire.

The Nazi system of hatred, that unleashed the Holocaust on the Jewish people, finally destroyed those who rode it to power. Those who incite hate will not remain untouched by its spread.

There is a world system of hate re-emerging from the abyss. Although manifesting in different cultures and locations, it is from the same source. World Leaders refer to the Epidemic of hate. They identify social media’s role spreading a tsunami of hate. These include the horrific mass rape of women in the horn of Africa; the darkness of racial hate, genocide against the Rohingya, the Uighurs, and the Yemeni nation. In the US, the dramatic rise in violence against Asian-Americans, the latest target of hate groups. These few examples and many others alert us to this sobering reality. The drive for power and control is the central issue in these campaigns of hate.

The scriptures warn those who promote and benefit from the spread of hate:

  therefore as I live, declares the Lord GOD, I will deal with you according to your anger and according to your envy which you showed because of your hatred against them; so I will make Myself known among them when I judge you (Eze 35:11).