Down and Out in Egypt

Egypt was glad when they departed, for dread of them had fallen upon it. -- Psalms 105:38

I admit that I am a rather perverse Christian.  I always smile when I read this verse.  It has often been the case in my life that people have been glad to be rid of me, probably not so much for dread as for annoyance.  The basis of the psalmist’s chant is Exodus 12:33, The Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste. For they said, We shall all be dead.  Plague after plague and destruction wrought by God had left the Egyptians fatigued, terrorized, beaten and baffled. 

The world has been, here in the West, remarkably tolerant of the Church in some of its manifestations.   There is, these days, though, a rising and more blatant animosity being expressed, not only by the militant atheists but society in general.  I am not worried by this. 

As individual believers, the times of stress and turmoil that we face can be the times when we experience the most rapid and genuine growth and fruitfulness. So, it can be, too, with the Church as a whole.  Persecution brings purification, and, sometimes the Body of Christ is in need of that, though we certainly don’t enjoy or welcome it.

There isn’t much that I would call “official” persecution going on here in the United States apart from the incursions of the fabulous gay –marriage gestapo against bakers and photographers.  The growing cultural opposition and antagonism to any public expressions of Christian faith, values, and piety, however, indicate that a watershed may be approaching.  More and more people find the idea of free speech on the part of anyone outside the Borg offensive.  Not content with ignoring and deriding us, they might prefer to have us silenced.

I am old enough to have attended school when the teacher led us in prayer, when Bibles were commonly found and even read from in the classroom, and we stood together to say the Pledge of Allegiance.  I doubt that any of those things were harmful to any child.  Being a child, when these activities ceased, I did not give much thought to it.  I am such an opponent of public schools and the dastardly teachers’ unions that I would oppose sending children to those indoctrination centers even if they allowed prayers.  In fact, it may not be too long before they do sanction prayer – five times a day, facing Mecca.

When the Israelites left Egypt, the biblical account states that they spoiled the Egyptians, taking much in the way of jewelry, gold and silver from their former masters.  The Lord was able to move the hearts of the Egyptians and make those arrangements because it all belongs to Him.  I believe that He will, amid the coming turbulence, give gifts to the Church, perhaps material riches, but certainly wisdom, insight, understanding, skills and talents that are necessary for the furtherance of the kingdom.  This will be the case all around the world, even in the heart of Muslim nations and oppressive socialist regimes.    

The pendulum swings; the wheel turns.  Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

What the Net Dragged In

 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.  When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad.  So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous -- Matthew 13:47-49

This little parable follows after the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares and its explanation.  It is related, for, as the weeds are separated out at harvest and burned, so the undesirable fish are cast away. They are not thrown back.  Those aren’t the fish the fisherman wants reproducing. 

I was reading Herman Ridderbos’ comments in his book The Coming of the Kingdom.  He discusses the question of why the tares could not be separated before the wheat was harvested.  When you think about it a little, this is the question that troubles a multitude of those in the valley of decision, as Joel says.  Why do we have to wait for the wicked to be removed from among us?  Why does God work only at the end of history?  The atheist’s answer is that, obviously, there is no God, and we are living in a delusion. 

The promoters of evolution ought to understand this better than anyone -- except for the fact that they reject the idea of the cosmos and existence having any meaning at all.  What we believe is that nature is very much part of the language of God and part of His revelation.  As we know from observing nature, if a predator is removed from the environment, the ecosystem is thrown out of balance.  There is overpopulation of the prey species and food sources are depleted to the point, in some cases, of irreversible destruction. 

If that is part of God’s revelation then we can see, as Jesus is teaching in these parables, that there is a balance to be maintained in the development of the kingdom.  There will come a point when the kingdom is perfected, when it is matured to a degree that allows us to move into an entirely new realm of existence.  This is depicted in the parables as the time of harvest, of the drawing in of the net.  When that Omega point is reached, the balance that has been part of our maturation process will no longer be necessary, and those influences will be removed while the righteous are brought in to their ultimate purpose and destiny. 

The answer that we give to the problem of evil will never be good enough for some of those who pose the question.  There are times, when I am battered and down, that it sounds pretty hollow to me.  I understand. The elk need the wolves as much as the wolves need the elk, yet it doesn’t make the kill any less painful or gruesome for the creature caught by the fangs.  I don’t know if elk have some sort of animal understanding of the interplay between themselves and their adversaries.  Perhaps they have something that gives them peace when it is their time to go down.  

 I do know that we have access to the wisdom of God.  A person may choose to live an animalistic, materialistic life.  He doesn’t have to.  The truth is all around us.  No one has to be a weed or a bottom-feeding scavenger, but even they, blindly, serve the ends of the kingdom.     

The Soon Return

Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.  -- Revelation 22:7 (KJV)

In the King James Version of the Bible, six times in the Book of Revelation, Jesus repeats these words:  I come quickly.  John is writing about those things that “must soon take place”.  Because of this, it is rather natural to take a futurist view of Revelation and conclude that it is about things that will happen at the “end of time”.  Whatever a person’s interpretation, we can surely agree that a repeated phrase such as “I come quickly” is important to understanding the message of Revelation. 

I prefer to bypass the eschatological fortifications erected around Revelation and look at this as an epistle written by the Apostle John to the churches of Asia Minor.  How would those early Christians have understood this letter with all of its expansive and graphic symbolism? 

For one thing, they might have understood this repeated promise of the Lord to come to them as not necessarily a full-fledged invasion.  I believe that Jesus will return to earth in the final destruction of the dichotomy between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world.  I don’t know when or how that happens and, as has become clear over the last thirty or forty years (if there were doubts before), neither does anyone else.

The churches to which John addressed his letter did not need an end-of-the-world answer.  They needed help dealing with a loss of faith, persecution, cultic leaders, hopelessness and confusion.  It sounds a lot like what I need.  The answer they received enabled them to stand and form the foundation of the Church as it has grown and developed through the ages.  For them, He came quickly.  So, too, for us, the Lord is coming to set things right.  Not in some far distance future, but today.  Jesus will show up when He is most needed and put our lives and our situations back on course. 

When I was a small child, we built a large hay barn.  We dug the trench for the footing by hand.  I say “we”, though I was not old enough to run a pick or spade.  Instead I was given a little coal shovel and tasked with keeping the footing clear of all the clay and rocks that got knocked back into it.  The barn’s still standing.  If it ever falls over, it won’t be because the foundation gave out.  One difficulty that we encountered is that we could only work on the trenching between the morning and evening milking.  It seemed to me that it went on for weeks, but it was probably done over the course of three or four days.  We had lines stretched and stakes driven to keep the foundation straight and square.  But, we could not keep the dairy cows completely away from the site, especially at night.  A couple of times all the squaring and checking had to be redone because some cow had stumbled over it. 

We run into trouble and into dead ends.  We get loaded down with mistakes and failures and regrets.  As Kipling notes so cleverly in “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”, we are surrounded by those who promise the wonders of social progress, yet the consequences of those ideas and advanced programs are like dumb, stumbling beasts that know not what lines they are tearing down. 

In building the barn, one morning, we had all the footing dug, the forms set and perfected, and we spent all day pouring concrete into those forms.  When it cured and the forms were removed, it was the end of the potential damage a cow might do.  The barn rose from that solid, square, level base, a solid, square construction. 

The Lord has a plan and is moving it toward completion.  There are times when things are a little more vulnerable, a little less impervious to the awkward, unthinking actions of the brutes and the ignorant.  We may suffer in those trying times – these trying times.  But the Lord has His square and His level out, and He is on His way to put it all back in order.  And the Church will rise.     

Working for the Living

And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You get here?”

Jesus answered them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you, for on Him the Father, even God, has set His seal.” -- John 6:25-27

Jesus had fed the multitudes with five loaves and two fish. He sent the crowds and His disciples away. He crossed the Sea of Galilee on foot in a storm during the night. The crowds that followed Him had seen miracles of healing and restoration. Jesus was at the height of His popularity. The people wanted to make Him king.

Most of us would have looked at this as success. Isn’t this what Jesus had come to earth to do? Wasn’t the Messiah’s job to restore the kingdom and the throne of David? Did Jesus not have every right to this adoration, to this position? Didn’t He have, we might say, even an obligation to accept their adulation? Yet instead of offering encouraging words, Jesus begins one of the most difficult discourses in the Bible. He all but mocks those who follow Him – or so it seems to them.

Jesus begins by throwing their motives in their faces. You are following Me not because of messianic signs, He says, but simply because I was able to fill your bellies with free food. They were beginning to think that following Christ was a picnic everyday. There’s no need to work or struggle, and no need to go hungry. There is an element of truth in this -- Come to Me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest, but the spirit is wrong.

God is often extremely gracious to believers early on in their walk. Everything just seems to flow to them as they are following, studying, and hearing much truth for the first time. But there comes a point when we are challenged, when we transition from milk to meat. Having entered the Kingdom as children, we must grow into sons able and willing to do the Lord’s work.

Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life. This is akin to the favorite verse of my late friend Eddie, Matthew 6:33, Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Jesus emphasizes the object for which we are to work. Laboring to gratify our appetites may be more virtuous than stealing, but our true goal should be to acquire spiritual vittles that satisfy fully the hunger in our souls.

Dear God, I thought I had learned this lesson long ago, but it seems that I must necessarily relearn or refresh from time to time. Christianity, fortunately, has a built-in continuing education program. The Lord will provide for me, but the physical provision I get so concerned about is incidental. It is the spiritual provision that matters. If one gets full enough of Spirit and Truth, he will not worry, nor need to worry, about having enough cornbread and beans.

Bob has been talking about economics and the threats we face from a socialist system. In the days to ahead, a certain kind of temporal prosperity to which we have become accustomed may be lost. An interventionist government, pandering to unions, environmentalists, and other non-productive elements, could easily cause the engine of our economy to seize. It’s a good time, right now, to invest in canned goods, staple food items that can be stored long-term, basic tools, heirloom seeds, ammunition, and barter items. The prices of the things we need are going to go higher.

But the most essential of my possessions are my hard copies of the Bible (and related Good books). Even more vital to my ability to survive and prosper – and do the will of God in trying times are those portions of Scripture that are in my heart. I know, for example, Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble; He saved them from their distresses. As much as I love my Springfield XDM, I don’t depend on it to do that.

I delight to do Thy will, O my God; Thy law is within my heart. -- Psalm 40:8