“Then the end will come, when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father after He has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power.” – 1 Cor. 15:24

In the early hours of January 3, 2026, while most of the world slept, U.S. Special Operations forces swept into a palace in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.

In under thirty minutes, Nicolás Maduro, a man who had wielded iron dominion over an entire nation, was in handcuffs.

A regime built on fear, enforced by violence, and sustained by the threat of death, dismantled in less than an hour.

For millions of Venezuelans who had lived under that shadow, one word said everything: destroyed.

In our meditation verse today, tucked inside the most magnificent chapter on resurrection ever written, the apostle Paul unleashes the same word.

The Greek term Katargeō does not simply mean ‘to destroy’ in the way a building is demolished.

It means to render useless, the same way Maduro’s hi-tech air defence systems were rendered useless by the invading Americans.

It means to strip of all force.

Think of a gun with the bullets or cobra with the fangs removed – still there, still visible, but causing absolutely no harm.

Paul is not saying something has ceased to exist. He is saying they have been rendered irrelevant or inconsequential.

And what are these powers? Paul is precise. He names three: dominions – rank and position, the throne itself; authorities – the legal right to exercise authority, the jurisdiction of rule; and powers – raw force, the physical ability to make things happen.

Together, they form a comprehensive taxonomy of power.

Every dictatorship, every spiritual principality, every structure of fear and coercion that has ever pressed its boot upon a human neck – Paul sweeps them all into one category and says: Christ has already begun the work of making them nothing.

This is not a footnote in Paul’s argument; it is the whole point.

The machine of death and domination is still visible, trying to intimidate – but it cannot cause harm.

The resurrection of Christ, he is insisting, was not merely a private miracle – a remarkable thing that happened to one man in a garden outside Jerusalem.

It was a cosmic coup. A D-Day for the old world order.

Paul knew something every oppressed person understands intuitively: that the greatest weapon of any tyrannical power is the threat of death.

Death is what makes people comply. Death is what keeps the fearful silent and the captive obedient.

This is why the resurrection matters on an ordinary Sunday morning, in your ordinary life, in a world that still looks very much like it is being run by the wrong people.

The powers are still visible. Pain still visits. Injustice still struts.

But Paul’s word is not a promise for a distant theological future alone.

It is a declaration about what has already been set in motion.

Christ’s resurrection was the moment the bullets were removed.

The machine of death and domination is still visible, trying to intimidate – but it cannot cause harm.

The verdict has been handed down.

Maduro’s fall took thirty minutes.

The fall of every power arrayed against God’s kingdom took three days – and on the third morning, it was done.

The end, when it comes, will not be a surprise. It will be a coronation.

“Then the end will come, when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father.”

And on that day, every form of dominion, authority, and power that ever made you afraid will be handed its papers – not annihilated, but something far more humiliating: made completely, utterly, irrelevant.

The King has risen. The empire is already falling.