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If he fathers a son who is violent, a shedder of blood, who does any of these things …  who even eats upon the mountains, defiles his neighbor's wife, oppresses the poor and needy, commits robbery, does not restore the pledge, lifts up his eyes to the idols, commits abomination, lends at interest, and takes profit; shall he then live? He shall not live. … -- Ezekiel 18:10-13

The thing that struck me in this verse is “does not restore the pledge”.  This refers back to Exodus 22:26-27 -- If ever you take your neighbor's cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering, and it is his cloak for his body; in what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

The Lord knew that it was possible in those times that a man might have nothing except his heavy outer garment, not unlike the Scotsman’s plaid of the Rob Roy style, to give as collateral for a loan.  A man would always come back for his cloak, at which time he could be reminded of his promise to repay.  However, it would be both pointless and too cruel to hold a man’s cloak overnight, for he would suffer and possibly become ill or even die from exposure. 

Still, it seems rather extreme to include the “crime” of holding onto a coat with adultery (or rape), robbery, killing, idolatry, and the rest. Yet all the more blatant acts of wickedness arise from the same root:  a sad lack of empathy, a sociopathic disregard for the good of our fellow humans.  We were talking about this the other day, in that, as the song says, “If you don’t love your neighbor then you don’t love God.”  We fail to recognize that our down-and-out brother has the same nature that we have, is a child of our Father, as we are, and is indwelt or maybe indwelt by the same Holy Spirit as we ourselves.   

Further, the message Ezekiel was given in this chapter is a counter to a proverb that was in common use:  The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.  That is, the people were seeing great turmoil and tribulation in their lives.  Some were suggesting that this was a result of the “sins of the fathers”.  There’s no doubt that the apostasy and iniquity of previous generations had caused Judah to come under condemnation.  We see the same thing today in America.  Our profligate spending throughout the last several decades, our embrace of an all-powerful central government, our acceptance of the welfare state, etc., all have contributed to our current decline as a nation, but it is no excuse for individual moral laxity. 

In the end, to sing yesterday’s refrain, the course of human events is not my concern.  We hop on the wheel of time, the cycle of history where it finds us, and we ride it to our getting off point.  We do what we can, where we can.  We may not have a lot to work with.  It may just be handing someone back his coat or inconveniencing ourselves to help someone get home.  God doesn’t forget any of it.    

I Have One Job

And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the LORD; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it. -- Ezekiel 17:24

Despite the advances in information technology and data dissemination, we do not know everything that is going on in the world.  Certain catastrophes and cataclysmic occurrences bubble up into our awareness, but history, we might say, is happening all around us every moment.  It’s like individual human consciousness, just because we are not aware, every second, of our heart beating doesn’t mean it is not a critical thing. 

Perhaps we could think of human history as analogous to individual memory.  We don’t have memories of things of which we were never conscious in the first place.  Or, do we?  They aren’t memories because we can’t remember them; we can’t recall or articulate them.  Nevertheless, there are things in our bones, in our guts, in our taste and tendencies and preferences, and in our dreams that we cannot explain.  As far as we know, it goes to our genetic heritage, and some of it probably does.  We were born this way, but we also learned things, came to know things, experienced things that remain always obscured and hidden below the surface.  

We have become who we are not solely by the things that we note and contemplate in our forebrains.  So, too, with history, it is not the treachery of kings and prime ministers that drive the fall of the kingdom.  Ezekiel 17 is a parable about Judah being subjected to the rule of Babylon then secretly aligning with Nebuchadnezzar’s enemy, Egypt.  The consequence would be destruction.  Out of that, however, the Lord would replant a Branch:  On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar. And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest (v.23).   This is a prophecy of the Messiah who is to gather and shelter those from all nations.

God is not dealing with nations.  He is not negotiating with the president or Congress about the fate of the United States.  He is working with each one of us.  Certainly, we may suffer together in aggregate because the majority of us vote for some stupidity, or because we as a nation have become wanton and degenerate.  Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.  Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment (Romans 13:1-2).   I don’t care much for our present government, but I recognize that we, as a whole, have brought it upon ourselves.  When we stand before our Father, however, we will stand alone and answer alone. 

History will record the names and deeds of our heralded and our honored, our heroes and our leaders.  It is, though, the millions of us unknowns that shape the nature and character of those we elevate or who are elevated into the consciousness of history.  They are the part of the iceberg that is seen and can be described.  The nation that honors Audie Murphy or that can produce Alvin York is different from the nation that calls Kanye West a visionary or that glorifies the perverseness of Bill Clinton. 

I cannot change the nature of a bunch of state-raised sheep by voting for the lesser of two evils – which won’t stop me from voting, but I should recognize the limits of what can be done.  I need to live the life of Christ.  I need to listen, to hear what God is saying to me to do today.  I have people I can help, things I can change.  I was reading somewhere a day or two ago about how the old Stoics have gotten something of an undeserved reputation.  It comes down to accepting that we do have control over some things, and those things we ought to do everything possible to control.  But we also have to accept that there are other things – a whole bunch of other things and especially other people – that we can do absolutely nothing about.  Those things, there is not only no point in worrying about, it’s counterproductive.  Myself, my reactions, my attitudes, behavior, virtues, etc., I can deal with that.  I can do something about those things.  That’s what I should work on.

Prophecy and History

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. – Romans 12:6-8

Some of that seems a little redundant to me.  If your gift is serving, teaching, or exhorting, those are the things you ought to do.  By the way, to exhort means “to urge, advise, or caution urgently; admonish urgently”, according to the dictionary.  When most Protestants, like me, think of preaching, we are thinking of exhorting.  That gives us some insight into what Paul was thinking when he talked about prophecy.

Someone who has the gift of prophecy – and, unlike Dispensationalists, I think that gift is still operational – gets understanding or information or insight in some way other than reading it from a book or from experience or some other natural means.  

 I am not a prophet, and I don’t have a prophetic gift, but I did have this happen one time as I have related in the past.  The one instance that I can point to and say with certainty was a very minor thing, simply telling someone that he was going to receive some books he wanted from an unexpected source.  It was almost astrological in its vagueness and non-specificity, but I was as convinced of the reality of it as if the giver himself had called me and told me what he was going to do.   

I can see where exercising a gift of prophecy would require faith, first in recognizing that the insight was a reflection of reality and not imagination, and, second, in acting or telling someone else to act in accordance with it.   

I think a lot of what has advanced the human race in the last couple of millennia has been as a result of the gift of prophecy.  Insights and inspiration come from somewhere.  Those who believe in naturalistic explanations for everything will argue that inspiration is simply a happy coincidence resulting from re-combinations of existing information.  Thus Shakespeare really is no different than a million monkeys typing; he’s just a lot easier to housebreak.   

There are times when what I would call natural inspiration happens, when we extrapolate from the known or pull in something from another realm of experience to apply to the situation before us in a new way.  We might call that wisdom, but sometimes wisdom surprises me, and the same Apostle who spoke of the gift of prophecy here, speaks of the gift of wisdom in another passage (1 Corinthians 12:8).  If we have the gift of wisdom, we know that not all have it, and it is not as easy as some might think to tell from where it comes. 

What is fairly clear is the purpose of our various gifts:  To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7).  When we look back over the course of history, we can see where humanity’s direction has changed, sometimes overtly and dramatically, sometimes subtly but no less substantially, by inspiration and by faith.  We live and enjoy the conveniences of modern life and our relative peace, prosperity, and security, I believe, by those manifestations of the Spirit given for the benefit of all. 

I suppose, then, we should not find it all that strange that the antichrist spirit of the world often seeks to gain control of what is beneficial, seeks to take credit for all the good that is done, or, failing in those endeavors, seeks to discredit and even eradicate a conduit of that inspiration.   

I wonder if all of this might be related to why so many of the world’s Nobel Laureates have been Jewish.  I also wonder if it would help explain why Anti-Semitism seems to be so popular from time to time.

Falling Lies

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. -- 2 Timothy 3:1

This is a verse often quoted by Christians.  It seems to indicate that human history and time in general is degenerative.  A little further on in this same chapter Paul says, “…while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (v.13).  Thus many conclude that everything is running downhill. 

I think we have talked before about the Day of the Lord and it not being the end of time or the end of the world, but a time in which God intervenes, sometimes in a very direct way, in the affairs of this world.  The Day of the Lord is a day when things get reset.  It is a course correction for history.  In the time prior to a Day of the Lord, we might expect, then, that things would be off course and getting worse. 

I usually see a date of about 67 AD for the writing of the Second Epistle to Timothy.  The rebellion by the Jews that led to the siege and destruction of Jerusalem had already begun.  God’s wrath was about to be executed by the hand of Titus.  Paul and Timothy were living in the “last days”. 

We, too, may be living in the last days.  Truth is an increasingly rare and precious commodity – so it seems sometimes.  If it is the case that we live in a time of deception, we can take some consolation in knowing that we are that much closer to a day when the lies will be stripped away. 

The Day of Lord must begin as a kind of winter.  The deceivers are rather like autumn leaves ablaze in their momentary glory.  The wind of the Spirit is about to blow.  Winter has its harsh beauties, but its mercies are cold.  Not everything makes it through the winter.  The faithful may be delivered by loss as much as through it. 

Wheel in the Sky

Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, “Come!”  And I looked, and behold, a white horse! And its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer.  When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!”  And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that men should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.  When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand.  And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!”  When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!”  And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth. – Revelation 6:1-8

My wife bought a book recently.  It was written by one of the popular teachers on prophecy.  He points out that “end times” does not mean “the end of time”, which is true if somewhat obvious.  I like to think about it like the Ages in Lord of the Rings.  Certain elements have ascendancy in a given age.  Those elements may weaken or even disappear in a subsequent age.  This is different from the natural cycles of history, though those cycles are part of any age.  A prophetic book whether the Revelation of John, the prophecies of Jeremiah, or The Chronicles of Narnia will be applicable in any epoch or administration and fulfillment may be glimpsed in types more than once.  Humanity has seen in Christ the anti-type that casts all of the shadows of the Law and the Prophets.  Some dark day humanity may see the ultimate anti-type of the many antichrists that pop up in history.  I do not know. 

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been around and may come around again.  They speak of a process that breaks down civilization.  It begins with the rider on the white horse.  Some say this is Christ, some say it is the Antichrist.  My interpretation is my own, but I see this first rider as tyranny, for tyranny almost always arises in a Good Cause -- on a white horse.  The tyrant comes as a rescuer, as one who can solve the problems inherent in, as Bill Clinton once said, too much freedom.  The sword of the red horse rider is a weapon symbolic of war in general, so perhaps the bow is meant to be a more specific symbol of suppression.  After all, the white horse rider comes as a conqueror rather than a warrior.  He is not fighting defensively.  He is the invader, the usurper and, ultimately, the despot. 

Tyranny and conquest are naturally tied to war and conflict.  Thus the conqueror is followed by one who takes peace from the earth and initiates great slaughter among humanity.  We see this played out on a small scale throughout the world as people find it impossible from time to time to live without killing their neighbors.  Many of these conflicts threaten to flare up and engulf much larger regions in blood red flames of war. 

The third rider is on a black horse and is the harbinger of economic hardship, famine, and lack.  Again this is a natural extension of the destruction of war which hampers the production of food and other resources along with trade and transport. In addition to hampering production and displacing resources, war itself is directly demanding in terms of food, fuel, and material.  There is nothing constructive or productive about war.  It is the ultimate form of broken-glass business stimulation.  It creates only to destroy.  The lives of many are disrupted.  Many become refugees, losing their own power to produce and becoming a drain on the productivity of others.   

Displaced people without enough food, lacking adequate shelter, often crowded together in unsanitary conditions are near perfect incubators for epidemics.  We are not surprised when the pale horse of pestilence follows hard in the footsteps of war and economic collapse.  As in our own American Civil War, disease often kills more than the war machines themselves.

What is unveiled to us is the dance of history, the cyclical destruction of humanity’s best efforts.  We build our civilizations and systems, determined to eliminate the flaws and weaknesses of prior systems only to find that we have created a weakness of a different kind.   There is only one kingdom that has a sure Foundation, and even that one must be tested, purged, purified, and refined.  The Church will endure, though at times it must be reduced to the Remnant, so it seems.  A company or two of prophets will be hidden away, and the Lord will find His seven thousand who have not bowed to Baal, and, in the end, we will come, not to another cycle of exaltation and destruction, but "to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ".  And He shall reign.    

Until then, while the horsemen ride their rounds and the old earth rolls as a sleeper in a recurring dream, the sun goes down each day, and I hear Yeats reading the evening news.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?