I’m Not Afraid to Die

I was having a conversation with a friend recently about a person’s attitude when death comes calling. She believed that everyone would cling to life in hopes that death could be avoided as long as possible. She had recently lost a loved one, so her thoughts were deeply personal and based on her own ideas about death and the afterlife. When I told her that I would welcome death because it is the door to a better life, she told me I might think differently if I were the one facing a terminal diagnosis.

I think she is wrong; I hope she is wrong. I haven’t heard the grim reaper’s steps in the hall, but I have a deep, abiding faith in what Scripture teaches about life after death. I think it is an expression of that faith that allows me the confidence to say that I will welcome it when it comes knocking. This position touches a subject I have covered previously: Confidence versus Arrogance. When I express absolute confidence (aka faith) in the Word of God, it sounds arrogant to unbelievers and believers who have not yet accomplished the renewal of their minds recommended by Paul.

What are the Scriptures that should renew our mortal fear of death? The first that comes to my mind is Paul’s poetic echo of the prophets in 1 Corinthians. “Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” Because I no longer bear the penalty for my sin which was taken by Christ on the cross, I have confidence that the sting of death is gone, and it is replaced by my joyous victory over it.

So then, death becomes a stage in life, a life everlasting with great expectations of continued joy. While I don’t pretend to know exactly what or how the transformation from this life to the next will be, I have numerous Scriptural clues about it. For one, Jesus told His disciples just before His death and resurrection that He was going away to prepare a place for them where they would join Him later. The place Jesus referred to (His Father’s house) is in that realm or dimension where God is said to dwell, often called Heaven.

This raises a question about exactly what Heaven is or where Heaven is. Curiously, in naming the disciples’ future destination, Jesus used a word that might well be translated “hotel.” This tempts us to think that the place Jesus referred to is not our permanent eternal dwelling, but rather a waystation between life on this earth and life on the new earth which will be created in God’s good time. Whatever or wherever the place is, we get a sense that we will have a consciousness that we will carry from this life to the next; otherwise, Jesus would not have suggested that His disciples would be joining Him there. His subsequent death and resurrection revealed a new body that bore recognizable marks of the old but with capabilities that were new.

Although many people believe that Christians go to Heaven when they die, this is not exactly what the Bible says. When the word heaven is used, especially by Jesus, it is in the context of the “Kingdom of Heaven.” In those instances, Jesus was not referring to a far distant place, but rather to a condition of God’s sovereign rule. The rule of Heaven is a metonymy much like the modern reference to the authority of the “White House.” What’s in view is a matter of control or reign; it’s what Jesus taught His disciples to pray for: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” We are to pray that “Heaven” would have complete control over the events of our earthly existence. Jesus repeatedly said that the Kingdom of Heaven, the sovereign rule of God had already burst onto the earthly scene with His incarnation. He never suggested it was the place we go when we die.

The fact is the Bible says very little about where we go when we die. One of the most encouraging passages is Paul’s declaration that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Paul does not elaborate on where that presence is, but he is confident that he will share a relationship with the Lord he serves. Jesus seems to have hinted at this reality when on the cross He told the penitent thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” No description or explanation is given as to what or where “Paradise” might be. Suffice it to say that it will be more than pleasant, particularly if that is where Jesus dwells.

Some of the most detailed hints we get about the afterlife are in Paul’s long dissertation on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. We learn there that at some point after death, we receive a different kind of body. We are not going to be resurrected with the same body we died with. Paul makes the point that when you bury a seed, the resulting growth is far different from the seed with characteristics and capabilities far surpassing the mere seed. That will be the case with our resurrection bodies.

We see hints of that in the body Jesus returned with after His death, resurrection, and ascension. He could pop in and out of rooms without bothering with doors; He could transit between the realm of God’s dwelling (Heaven?) and our earthly plane at will. He was recognized by His disciples even to the point of showing them the wounds caused by His crucifixion. The apostle John says that we don’t know precisely what form our bodies will take, but he says with confidence that we will be like Jesus because we will see Jesus as He is. We will have spiritual eyes enabled to see the spiritual bodies Paul says we get upon our resurrection.

This is not to suggest that our new bodies are not corporeal—physical in some sense. We are not to go the way of the Greek philosophers or the Gnostic Christians who believed flesh was evil, and our ultimate goal was to attain a spiritual existence devoid of the physical form in which we occupy space on earth. Paul assures us that we will be resurrected in a body; his point is that it will be a body of a different sort, though it will be recognizable as who we were.

When God created the earth and put humans on it, He declared that it was good. Sin stained that goodness, but God has promised to recreate it once again. That is why I am not afraid to die: I want to experience that Edenic perfection and intimate fellowship God intended for His children. The truth is I am looking forward to it. But I say with Paul that it is better that I remain on earth until my Lord is finished with me. The God who created everything and everyone has a family to gather; when it is complete, we are all going home. I am ready whenever He is.

To Know God’s Will

This is a sequel to “Why Do the Wicked Prosper?” If I was correct in my conclusion that material prosperity is not a sign of God’s approval or blessing, what measure can we use to ascertain God’s will? If we look at the record of Scripture, we cannot use pleasant circumstances as a clue. Daniel was apparently in God’s good graces when he was tossed into the lion’s den. Same for his three friends and the fiery furnace. Joseph spent several years in prison before being elevated to a position where he could save his family. Paul’s desire to preach the gospel in Rome was facilitated by an arrest and prison time. The record is clear; God sometimes uses unhappy times to accomplish His sovereign will.

Many Christians take comfort in the promise of Romans 8:27-28. As I have said before, the promise is often misunderstood. My translation of verse 28 reads like this: For we know that for those who love God and are being called to accomplish His purpose, all things work together for good. I put this unique twist on it because of the context. In verse 27, the Holy Spirit is said to intercede for believers “according to God.” Most translations add “the will of” God. The “will of” is drawn from the concept of God’s purpose, His will, found in verse 28. In other words, God’s will is the ultimate good toward which all things are working together. Daniel and Joseph and Paul went through some serious “not good” before the good purpose of God was realized. And yet, they were fully within the will of God.

So, if we cannot use material prosperity or pleasant circumstances to gauge whether we are within God’s will, what can we use? Are we doomed to wonder, perhaps until the next life whether we are pleasing God? I don’t believe so. Romans 12:2 assures us that we, “may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” In that context, Paul recommended a renewed mind and resistance to the world’s pressure as the path to knowing God’s will. This is the first and most reliable key. Revealed truth found primarily in the Scripture is the source of the renewed mind. Once we begin to think God’s thoughts after Him (as much as humanly possible), we can know His will.

Even an elementary knowledge of Scripture reveals much of God’s will for His people. We don’t have to wonder whether it’s okay to sleep with the neighbor’s wife, or if it’s okay to rob a bank to pay bills. (Exodus 20:14-15) We know that if we fail to care for those in need, we have violated the core command of God’s law. (Luke 10:30-37) We know that if we allow our anger to burst out in derisive or slanderous speech, we have invalidated our Christian faith. (James 1:26) We know that if we have vengeful thoughts or take action against those who we believe have wronged us, we are outside of God’s will. (Romans 12:19-20) In fact, we know that if we are insulted or persecuted, we are among the blessed of God. (Matthew 5:11-12)

I could go on, but I have made my point. There are hundreds if not thousands of direct expressions of God’s will for our lives. It is our duty to renew our minds with these clear commands before we set off wondering what God’s will is. It is also our responsibility to take these rules of conduct to heart and adjust our behavior accordingly. The Scripture warns that to know what is right and to not do it is sin. (James 4:17)

God has provided another source to help us know what He wants of us: our fellow believers. If a brother or sister discovers we have stepped out of God’s will, they are bound to steer us back to the path with a gentle spirit. (Galatians 6:1-2) If the wrong has been done against us, we must follow the pattern laid out by Jesus: first go to the one who wronged us and tell them we were hurt; then, if that is not well-accepted, take another mature believer with you, and try again. Then, if there is still no recognition or repentance, the whole church must be made aware. (Matthew 18:15-20) This kind of church discipline is rare today in our hypersensitive, politically correct society, but it is as much God’s will as any other command. We may never know how many wandering sheep may have been brought back into the fold if their fellow-believers had just followed this instruction.

What if there is no clear biblical precedent to follow? What if there are no mature believers willing to step in to help? In those cases, we make inferences from the what the Word of God teaches, and we do our best to apply them. Obviously, this is not foolproof. We may misapply Scripture. We may be ignorant of a principle that would be helpful. Our most reliable course of action is to first do nothing – nothing except pray. God has promised wisdom to those who ask. (James 1:5-8) If we step out to act without first waiting for God to speak, we have become the fool – the one who lives as if God doesn’t exist.

If after praying for guidance, we still don’t have a clear answer, it may be helpful to thoughtfully consider a potential course of action. After thinking about what to do, if there is no sense of resistance or correction in the spirit, it may be time to take the first step toward action. It has often been said that God will open and close doors as a way to guide His children. This is not ironclad either because the enemy is also able to manipulate worldly affairs to his advantage. This is when a keen sense of God’s Spirit within us is essential. We know that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17) In the context of that verse, Paul was talking about the veil being lifted so that we can see the truth. We need that unveiled view to know whether we are free to proceed.

If we decide to move one step at a time into our proposed course of action, the freedom of the Spirit should allow us to have the peace we are promised. Paul told the Philippians that if they made their request made known to God, “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7) I believe the Spirit-given peace will be made available even as we begin to consider what to do. If we set our minds to do something that would be contrary to God’s design, His Spirit will make us uncomfortable – remove the peace. When that happens, we must backtrack; wait again; pray again.

There have been too many times in my life when I have stepped out of God’s will because I didn’t bother to seek it. Often those incidents involved the purchase of a car or motorcycle. I have also said things in the heat of the moment that I soon wished I could retract. Lately, my problems have come from knowing what to say or not to say in a public forum (eg. Facebook) or in private conversation about a controversial issue. I’m getting better, but I still have a ways to go. I use the “peace test” to weigh my responses when I remember to do it, and it has served me well. I have also ignored it at times and paid the emotional penalty.

We can’t always know God’s will perfectly. Sometimes there is no Scripture, no mature friend, no inner witness. Even then, we do know that God has our back as the saying goes. He can take our worst failures and turn them into something that ultimately accomplishes His will. The Bible tells us to rejoice in trials because they make us better. (James 1:2-4) That is comforting, but it is not a license to screw up so we can learn. There are less painful ways to be educated than the school of hard knocks.

Why Do the Wicked Prosper?

The question posed in the title is one every thinking believer has asked. The Old Testament is peppered with the question. (See Job 12:6; 21:7–15; Psalm 92:7; Malachi 3:15) The prophet Jeremiah who wrote from very personal experience with “the wicked” put it like this:

Why are the wicked so prosperous?

    Why are evil people so happy?

² You have planted them,

    and they have taken root and prospered.

Your name is on their lips,

    but you are far from their hearts.

³ But as for me, Lord, you know my heart.

    You see me and test my thoughts.

Drag these people away like sheep to be butchered!

    Set them aside to be slaughtered!

⁴ How long must this land mourn?

    Even the grass in the fields has withered.

The wild animals and birds have disappeared

    because of the evil in the land.

For the people have said,

    “The Lord doesn’t see what’s ahead for us!”

 

Jeremiah was warning Judah that they were about to suffer the same fate that had befallen Israel some 200 years earlier. They were going to be defeated and taken captive by the Babylonians in the near future, yet they continued in their wicked ways. They didn’t just ignore Jeremiah; they persecuted him harshly. It is not hard to understand why Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet.

In verse three the prophet slips into what is called an imprecatory attitude; he asks God to execute justice on the wicked; he wants the judgment God has promised to come quickly. In this context, it is not the wicked Babylonians Jeremiah wants slaughtered like sheep; it is his own countrymen – the wicked men of Judah. I understand that because, in a way, they are more culpable than the Babylonians; they have Moses’ law and the other prophets. They should know better, but their history by this point has proven that they are unwilling to follow God’s commands.

Jesus told a parable about the consequences for servants who were disobedient during their master’s absence. “And that slave who knew the will of his master and did not prepare or do according to his will will be given a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did things deserving blows will be given a light beating. And from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be demanded, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will ask him for even more.” The leaders in Judah in Jeremiah’s time were those “to whom much [had] been given.” Jeremiah was asking God to give them the beating they had coming.

When I look at Judah’s predicament, my first thought is that the Babylonians should be the ones getting slaughtered by God. In fact, according to Isaiah, it was God Himself who brought the Babylonians to power explicitly to chastise His people. Then, in an odd twist of fate, God deals the Babylonians their just deserts by bringing in the Persians to conquer them. Eventually it was Cyrus the Persian who released the Jews from their captivity to rebuild Jerusalem – something God had predicted over one hundred years before it happened.

This is all interesting history, and it is some of the best proof we have that God knows the end from the beginning, but I see a lesson for us in this. Jeremiah complains that the wicked are happy and prosperous even though God is, “far from their hearts.” It is no coincidence that the great enemy of the church in the book of Revelation is called Babylon. Nor is it surprising that God’s judgment falls on Babylon. Interpreters differ whether Babylon is a metaphor for apostate Jerusalem, judged and destroyed in 70 AD, or if it refers to some future entity (the resurrected Roman empire for example). Either way, God wins; justice triumphs; the church is victorious.

I still want to pray like Solomon did when dedicating the temple: “May you judge your servants, [by] condemning the wicked man [and] bringing what he has done on his own head.” When speaking of people who “suppress the [obvious] truth,” Paul said they would receive, “in themselves the penalty that was necessary for their error.” In Psalm 69 David asked that God would, “Pour out your indignation on [my adversaries], and let your burning anger overtake them.” If not for these passages and others like them, one could assume that this kind of vengeful attitude is too human for a believer, but apparently it is not wrong to pray that evil people get their due.

However, I cannot forget that God’s most severe judgment and Jesus harshest condemnation was always against those who should have known better. I fear what this means for people who claim to be Christian but preach a twisted gospel saying that gender is fluid or that God can bless same-sex marriage or that the virgin birth and Christ’s divinity don’t matter or that hell and judgment don’t exist. Even more disturbing is the condition of the Christian who sits in church every Sunday but is no different than his non-believing neighbors the rest of the week. I remember James’ judgment of people who hear the Word but don’t do anything in response.

The so-called prosperity gospel says that God’s blessing is evidenced by the believer’s physical prosperity. If that is true, how do we handle the question of the prosperity of the wicked? If there is anything to be learned from the lives of the Apostles and centuries of Christian martyrs, it is that worldly prosperity is not the measure of true faith. This is the answer to my title question: the wicked prosper only until God brings about their demise. By contrast, the righteous prosper through all eternity; we just define prosperity differently.

Related posts: Friendship With the World; Through the Bible in Seven Minutes; The Knowledge of Good and Evil

The Missing Book

Something I read in Second Kings about King Josiah got me thinking. When he took over from his predecessor, a spectacularly wicked king, Josiah ordered the clean-up and restoration of Solomon’s temple which had fallen into disuse and misuse during earlier reigns. In the process, they found the scroll of the Torah, also known as the books of Moses, which had remained hidden for a long time. Josiah’s emotional reaction (he tore his robes) indicates the level of his piety for which he is famous. Josiah ordered the book to be read and he discovered the institution of the Passover. Here is what shocked me: the writer of Second Kings says that the Passover had not been celebrated since the time of the judges.

Not Saul, nor David, nor Solomon bothered to obey the command to remember the Lord’s deliverance from Egypt with the annual celebration of Passover. What is most curious to me is that both David and Solomon made scores of references to the word of the Lord in their writings. David’s 19^th Psalm extols the law, the precepts, and the ordinances of God as enduring forever, righteous altogether, more desirable than gold. Yet apparently, Israel’s greatest king, a “man after [God’s] own heart,” couldn’t be bothered to keep one of the required feasts, perhaps the most important feast, commanded in the law.

I can only assume that the scroll discovered by Josiah was not read by David. That is what the text of Second Kings implies. Surely, the man after God’s heart would follow such a clear command if he knew of it. But he didn’t. I am left wondering what David used as his supporting text for his volume of Psalms that regularly encourage the following of God’s commands. Perhaps they were oral tradition, or they might have been other documents that are lost to us. The point is that apparently, David didn’t read the Torah.

This might explain why he had as many problems as he did. If you are not regularly reading the law that says thou shalt not commit adultery or thou shalt not commit murder, maybe you can plead ignorance regarding the Bathsheba and Uriah incident. I note that when the prophet Nathan confronted David with his obvious sins, the approach was an emotional one rather than a legal one. David was asked to consider the theft of a poor man’s lamb for a rich man’s pleasure. Incensed, David demanded that justice be executed upon the wicked person. “Thou art the man,” proclaimed Nathan. Perhaps they were ignorant of the law’s requirement to stone adulterers and murders; could they be applied to the king?

But if they were not reading the law because it had been missing since the time of the judges, one would not expect it to be brought out in accusation. Might this also explain David’s twenty-odd wives, and his horrible track record with his children. Moses had commanded that children be raised with great respect for the requirements of the Lord. Was David relying on his own understanding of what God wanted instead of reading it as written in the Books of Moses?

It was not until the remnant of Israel was returned to the land of promise that they began to revere God’s Word. Perhaps they finally realized what they had been missing. Fortunately, the destruction of the temple did not include the loss of the scrolls of Moses. The captivity in Babylon forced the Israelites to consider what they had lost. Among those lost things was the Law. In post-exile Palestine, the institution of the synagogue (which had its beginnings in Babylon) became almost as important as the temple itself. The rise of the scribes and Pharisees who are so prominent in the time of Christ also began during this period. It is believed that Ezra, one of the returnees from Babylon, wrote much of the history of Israel as we now have it. The rabbis, a feature of the synagogues, began to write commentaries and other genre such as the apocryphal books that Jews respect even to this day.

We know that the canon of Jewish scripture was well developed by 150 B.C. because a group of Alexandrian Jewish scholars translated their scriptures into Greek in what became known as the Septuagint. Jesus and the writers of the books we now call our New Testament, all make reference to the Word of God as the Jews had received it. The devout Jews and then the early Christians, many of whom were converted Jews, had great reverence for the Scripture. They knew their lives depended on it, and they often gave their lives for it. And they turned the world upside down.

I am about to beat a dead horse, so pardon me. Search any pollyou can find about Bible reading in the modern church, especially in America, and you will be dismayed by its absence. If that were not bad enough, polls also prove that even those who claim to read and believe the Bible differ very little in their lifestyles from those who make no such claims. I wonder where the Josiahs are who could find in Scripture a reason to tear their clothes and weep over the rediscovery of God’s word.

If the modern church seems to be powerless to do anything about America’s descent into paganism, it is because her people don’t read their Bibles; they are ignorant of the power they have through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. To quote N.T. Wright, the message of Christ’s resurrection is, “that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ, and that you’re now invited to belong to it…. There are many parts of the world we can’t do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world… we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us calls ‘myself.’ Personal holiness and global holiness belong together. Those who wake up to the one may well find themselves called to wake up to the other as well.”

It is just as Paul encouraged the Romans, “Wake up… The night is almost gone; the day of salvation will soon be here. So, remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes, and put on the shining armor of right living. Because we belong to the day, we must live decent lives for all to see.” (Romans 13:11-13 NLT) This echoes what Jesus said, “Let your light shine before people, so that they can see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” We need to bring the church out of the new dark ages it has fallen into. Light it up! Read the Book.

Related posts: Read This Or Die; Through the Bible in Seven Minutes; Take the Bible Literally; Understanding the Bible as Literature; What Did You Do Today; Merely Christian

The Patience of God

As I read through the history of the divided kingdom – Israel and Judah – I am struck by the incredible patience of God. From the moment they split, the northern tribes, then known as Israel, went astray. Because they couldn’t go to Jerusalem to worship anymore (it was in the region of Judah), they established places of worship in their own territory. Quickly, these devolved into pagan shrines honoring the very gods Yahweh had forbidden them to worship. Without exception, the kings of Israel refused to clean up their act, and the treachery, assassination and bloody coups which smear their history prove the error of their ways.

Yet, to my amazement, God put up with Israel’s faithlessness for almost 200 years before He finally turned them over to the Assyrians who dragged them off the land and dispersed them across their empire. Judah’s track record is slightly better, having a few kings who tried to follow David’s example of righteousness. Ultimately, though, even they were deported to Babylon for their 70-year captivity about 100 years after Israel was taken. Here again, Yahweh’s patience shines forth in His promise to return them to the land after they had served their sentence.

From our vantage point on this side of Calvary, we can understand that Judah had to be saved so that the Lion of Judah could appear to do the work God had planned. We may wonder at the centuries-long process to bring about the culmination of the plan, but we should remember that with God, “a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day.” Realistically, the true time period of the redemption plan starts even further back just outside the Garden of Eden when God promised to effect a rescue from human fallenness by the “Seed of woman,” later identified as Jesus Christ.

I can only begin to understand the reasons for God’s patience when I consider His larger purpose. As I have recently discovered (See Understanding Salvation and It’s Not All About You), from the moment of creation, God has been in the business of developing a race of creatures who can serve as His agents in the process of turning Earth into His fellowship garden. He had that for a minute, walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day, until the deceiver ruined the plan. I believe He still wants that, and Jesus’ announcement that the Kingdom of Heaven had come to earth marks the next phase of its development.

After years of sermons and seminaries teaching me that salvation is about saving souls, I have come to the realization that we have missed the point. Getting saved is not about going to heaven when we die. It is about getting with the program and bringing heaven to earth now. As N. T. Wright points out in Surprised by Hope (yes, him again), doubters might say that there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of heaven on earth 2,000 years after Jesus announced its arrival, yet there are plenty of signs if one wishes to see them. The Soviet Union was toppled in large part by the efforts of a Polish Pope. Apartheid was dismantled through the efforts of an African bishop. Nations and neighborhoods are being transformed by the persistent pressure of the coming kingdom in many large and small ways.

I fall prey to the same thinking that prompted Peter’s contemporaries to ask why God has delayed His coming. Look what he answers: “The Lord is not delaying the promise, as some consider slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not want any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” There it is again: the patience of God. Why is He so patient? Because He is gradually building His family of co-heirs with Christ to complete the original plan: make Earth His garden.

Many ancients believed their gods dwelled on a mountain in a garden. In our case, Zion is the mountain of the Lord – the garden of His delight. Revelation predicts that the whole earth will one day be filled with God’s glory. For now, according to Hebrews, we have come to Mt. Zion, but only in a spiritual sense, obviously. We are waiting for the final chapter when the new heavens and the new earth will bring the kingdom of heaven fully to earth.

I am not saying like many used to believe that we can make earth a heavenly kingdom so that Christ may return. I am saying that our kingdom work begins now because the real meaning of kingdom is rulership. We can announce the rulership of Jesus as Lord right now. When the disciples asked Jesus on the day of His ascension if He was restoring the kingdom at that time, His answer is misunderstood. He didn’t say, “No;” He said, “Yes, but the kingdom is going to look quite different from what you have imagined.”

Quoting Wright again: “What Jesus has in mind is every bit as much the fulfillment of God’s long-delayed plan for Israel and the Kingdom. Jesus has been raised from the dead… [and] is the world’s true Lord…. His messengers, his emissaries, are to go off into all the territories of which He is already enthroned as Lord and to bring the good news of His accession and His wise and just rule.” We must do what the first disciples did: go into our world and summon everyone to believing obedience to the “new sheriff” in town.

While doing this, we follow Micah’s advice: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God.” Or as someone once said, preach the good news always and everywhere; when necessary, use words. God is waiting patiently for us to help Him gather the full complement of His people. Once that’s done, God will renew us and the rest of creation so we can continue the business He started in Eden, finally bringing Him all the glory and enjoying Him forever.

Related posts: It’s Not All About You; Understanding Salvation

Defending the Wrath of God

When God gave instructions to Joshua to conquer the land of Canaan, He generally said to kill everyone including women and children. Sometimes even the animals were to be slaughtered. This seems excessive. It is certainly offensive to most modern peoples’ sense of justice or fairness. I wrote about the mental conflict this causes several years ago in Daily Bible Reading. In that article I pondered how one could explain God’s wrath to an unsaved neighbor. I concluded somewhat weakly that we had to let God be God and stop trying to understand the incomprehensible.

There are reasons we can give for God’s harsh instructions to Joshua. For one thing, we know that the people inhabiting the promised land were there under God’s judgment. God told Abraham that neither he nor his immediate descendants would inhabit the land God promised because, “the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” Amorites was a catch-all name for the various people groups that lived in the land of Canaan. Either God was exhibiting the patience Paul speaks of hoping for repentance, or He knew they would eventually get so bad they would have to be wiped out. This answer won’t satisfy a modern non-believer, but it is justifiable to anyone who believes in the sovereignty of God.

Another reason why God wanted Joshua to exterminate virtually every living person in the conquered land was because God knew the Israelites would be tempted to intermarry with the indigenous people (a forbidden act) and to follow the pagan gods they worshipped. Both of those things occurred, and there is a curious reason given by God to explain why He let Joshua get away with only partial genocide in several cases. In the book of Judges, God admits He left some of the pagans, “in order to test Israel whether or not they would observe the way of Yahweh, to walk in it just as their ancestors did.” Again, this is an unsatisfying explanation if you are not willing to let God write His own script for the plan of redemption.

The incident that sparked this visit to the topic is a dream that I woke from early this morning. I couldn’t recall the details of the dream, but when I awoke, I heard myself defending God’s reasoning for total extermination of the Canaanites. I explained that God knew that the pagan gods worshipped by the people in the promised land were actually demons posing as gods. Paul supports this idea telling the Corinthians that the things pagans sacrifice, “they sacrifice to demons and not to God.” This reveals the fact that the land was infested with allies of Satan, God’s arch enemy. Eliminating the people who worshipped the demons was part of the cosmic battle being waged through the millennia. (For more on the battle see America is Not the Promised Land and It’s Not All About You)

God’s harsh treatment of the demon worshippers also had a benefit to Israel beyond the cosmic victory. If the people had been allowed to remain, the demons they worshipped would also be present because demons often inhabited people. This may also explain why in some instances God insisted that they kill all the animals too. We have only to remember when Jesus cast the demons out of the Gadarene demoniac; the demons asked to be allowed to enter a nearby herd of pigs. It is a reasonable, even loving act by God to require the extermination of anything that would permit His enemy to have a foothold in or near His people.

We don’t talk much about demons these days even in our churches. There is a line of reasoning that says demonic activity accelerated during the time of Christ on earth due to the importance of the events of the day. This seems to avoid the obvious fact that the demons were there in the centuries before the incarnation, and there is no reason to think that they suddenly became extinct at the Cross of Calvary. Paul did tell the Colossians that Christ triumphed over the evil powers on the cross, but he also reminded the Ephesian believers that our battle continues primarily against wickedness in the spiritual realm. Until Christ puts all the enemies under His feet, the battle rages. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis aptly pointed out that there is no better strategy for the enemy of our souls than to make us believe he doesn’t exist. The cosmic battle continues; we are pawns in that war whether we know it or not.

Getting queasy about the wrath of God is a corollary to ignoring the spiritual battle that we all participate in. If we honestly regarded the faces of evil we encounter in our daily lives, I don’t think we would despise the wrath of God that is due His enemy. We are soft on sin, and we deny the depth to which it has pervaded our society. My woke neighbors will hate me for saying this, but when political correctness becomes a cloak for evil, we have surrendered the field without firing a shot.

Paul made the point clearly in the first chapter of Romans: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all impiety and unrighteousness of people, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” The silence of believers concerning the “impiety and unrighteousness of people” gives aid and comfort to the enemy. I know that vengeance belongs to the Lord, not me. But if I don’t warn people of the wrath to come, don’t I become complicit in their evil deeds? Their destiny is in their hands, but should we not tell them what’s coming? According to Jesus, and Paul and Peter (quoting the Psalmist), genuine Christian witness will never win a popularity contest, but you have to ask yourself this: do you want to be popular, or do you want to be right? I like the tone of the old Rich Mullins song: “Our God is an Awesome God”. His wrath is part of what makes Him so awesome. We can celebrate that with no shame whatsoever. 

Related posts: Not Our Father’s God; That’s Not God; The Goodness of Wrath 

Lessons From History

 My recent through the Bible reading covers the lives of David and Solomon. Both of these men were spoken of reverently and honored by God and Israel (most of the time). In retrospect, I don’t think either one is a perfect role model. David’s most glaring failure was the incident with Bathsheba which ultimately produced Solomon. Solomon became all the terrible things God warned Israel about when they clamored for a king. Jews today still look back at those two kings as representing the glory years of Israel. And yet….

Last November I wrote a piece called “Losing the Boundary Stones.” In it I warned that forgetting history or rewriting it as many wish to do today would cause the loss of important elements of who we are. Knowing where we have come from personally and politically should help us understand who we are and protect us from making the same mistakes we find in our past. Instead of using past mistakes as lessons, many people today want to erase them from our collective memory. The wisdom of the frequently quoted line applies: those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

In a recent post I cited an article published in Imprimis, a Hillsdale College publication. The article said that sinister forces are attempting to radically reshape Western culture. A reader emailed me after reading the piece to say that he was praying for protection from the likes of me. He included Hillsdale and the “white evangelical American church” and its “demonic minions” as like-minded institutions. This caused me to speculate about what could be so dastardly about wanting to return to the principles that motivated our founding fathers. I know the woke culture today wants to erase most of our past, but I cannot fathom how a supposedly Christian person could see a revival of our founding principles as demonic.

That led me to question my own opinion of America’s founding ideals. Beginning with the first European colonists, our history is replete with honorable efforts and horrific failures. I am reminded of David and Solomon. Both they and we have checkered records. The Jews rightly honor David and Solomon as we do Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin et al. I don’t want to follow Jefferson in his disbelief of Bible miracles. I certainly don’t condone Franklin’s peccadilloes. However, they each have their moments of greatness. It is especially noteworthy that Washington’s farewell address revealed his solid Christian worldview.

I understand that being Christian doesn’t necessarily mean all their positions can be supported biblically. The early colonists mistreated the Native Americans. Washington held slaves. Rather than expunge the record of these misdeeds, we should look more deeply into their reasoning to seek understanding. The triumphalism of the Protestant colonists caused them to gloss over the clear Bible teaching that all humans are created in God’s image and due appropriate honor. The founders’ desire to keep the southern colonies in the new union led them to accept slavery, although many saw it as a temporary situation needing correction later. An accurate record of history does not necessarily condone everything it records.

There is another popular saying about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. David is “a man after God’s own heart” not because he is an adulterous murderer; his willingness to confess his sins and repent earned him that title. Thomas Jefferson is not remembered honorably for his dalliance with one of his slaves, but for his wise application of Lockian principles of government. If we can learn anything from the utter humanness of people in our past, it should be that perfection is unattainable. Even more, we should recognize that God does not expect perfection in His people. “He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.” That does not give license to wallow in the dust, however. It should assuage our guilt over our own misdeeds as well as those of our forebears.

Israel never became the light to the nations it was created to be. America has never been a flawless Christian nation. The shortcomings of both nations should be not just remembered but highlighted. Paul told the Corinthians that they should take note of the failure of Israel to remain faithful so that they would not fall into the same unbelief. The principle applies equally to American history. Instead of tearing down statues of people who committed offenses to our modern sensibility, we should teach our children what the offenders did and explain why it was wrong.

Christianity is a historical faith. That means it is based on what God has done using real people, flawed people to accomplish His will on earth. The story of Israel without reference to David or Solomon would be significantly diminished. We can’t take the Jeffersonian approach and snip out passages of Scripture that we don’t like. “Question with boldness even the existence of God,” [Jefferson] urged his nephew in 1787, “because if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.” I am a proponent of reason as anyone who reads me regularly knows. However, I do not believe that leaving the Bible whole, warts and all, is an offense to reason. Rather, it is a testament to faith. Because I don’t “question the existence of God,” I accept His Word as the inspired revelation it is. We should do the same with American history minus the inspiration. Read and learn.

Related posts: What’s Wrong With Politics; Pandemic of Disrespect; Christians Are Responsible to be Politically Engaged