What does the ‘Canon of Scripture’ mean?

Question: What does the ‘Canon of Scripture’ mean?

Answer:

The Greek word kanon means a rule or measuring rod.

Canon first means the collection of books for which prescribed tests have been applied to determine whether they are considered authoritative and worthy of being part of the sacred Scriptures.

Canon also means all the books collectively. The Canon is thus all the Scriptures that constitute the ‘rule of faith’ by which all doctrine is tested.

What does Inerrancy of Scripture mean?

Question: What does Inerrancy of Scripture mean?

Answer:

a) The idea of inerrancy

The inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact.

i.e. the Bible always tells the truth about whatever it speaks about.

We have already noted that Jesus referred to the Old Testament many times and each time assumes truth.

Paul was able to say, “I believe everything that agrees with the Law and that is written in the Prophets” (Acts 24:14)

and also

“For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom 15:4) – an all embracing coverage of Scripture.

b) Problems with Denial of Inerrancy

To deny the correctness of Scripture means:

• any and all of it becomes potentially unreliable
• it is impossible to know where to draw the line
• it becomes a matter of human arbitration as to where to draw the line
• we can believe nothing with certainty.

c) Faith is Built on Evidence

We are mindful that to come to a belief in the inerrancy or correctness of Scripture requires but as the Bible itself says, “faith comes by hearing”.

Faith is in fact built on evidence – the evidence of God’s voice, which the more and more we read the Scriptures, the more we sense we are discerning God’s voice through them, and the more certain we become of their reliance and authority.

The writer to the Hebrews said,

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Heb 11:1).

This is one of the strange things about faith:

• we need to come with an open mind as to the possibilities
• we need to examine (read) the evidence (Scriptures)
• as we do so more and more, we find a growing assurance that what we have before us is certain.

What Historical Support is there for Inspiration?

Question: What Historical Support is there for Belief in Inspiration?
Who in history has supported the idea of inspiration of the Scriptures?

Answer:

What is interesting is that the early creeds were concerned to specify certain beliefs about God and about Jesus – but never refer to the inspiration of Scripture – they all assume that these beliefs are inspired and revealed by God.

When we come to the page about the validity of the Old Testament, we will see that Jesus himself quoted from it again and again, giving no sense that it is anything less than completely true.

A few quotes from the many that are possible must suffice to illustrate historical support.

Flavius Josephus, Jewish historian, first century AD in Against Apion:

“How firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to make any change; but it is become natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and if occasion be, willingly to die for them.”

He also gave a list of those books which exactly corresponds with the books we have in our Old Testament today.

Irenaeus, church father of the late second century in Against Heresies:

“when.. they are confronted from the Scriptures, they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures as if they were not correct.”

and

“being most properly assured that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit.”

The 1664 Westminster Confession of Faith, the Church of England’s reformed confession of faith listed the books of our Bible referring to them as:

“All which are given by inspiration of God , to be the rule of faith and life.”

“The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the Canon of Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.

“The authority of the holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man or Church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the Author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.

Richard Baxter, one of the great Puritans:

“No error or contradiction is in it, but what is in some copies, by the failing of preserver, transcribers, printers, or translators.”

How was God involved in producing the Bible?

Question: How was God involved in producing the Bible?

Answer:

a) Unaware involvement by men

It is clear from the Scriptures that God can inspire people to do things without their awareness that this is happening

Example: the king of Assyria as noted in Isa 10:5-

Thus it is probable that, similarly, there were scribes who recorded the activities of Israel who were not specifically aware of divine prompting, although it could be there.

b) God wrote Himself

This is exactly the opposite extreme. This was unusual and was limited to the production of the Ten Commandments:

“The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets” (Ex 32:16)

and

“The LORD said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.” (Ex 34:1)

c) God Instructed men

The next activity, nearest to that extreme above, was God instructing people to write:

“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it ” (Ex 17:14)

the opposition to and vanquishing of the Amalakites recorded.

“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” (Ex 34:27)

the basic laws of the covenant given on Mount Sinai recorded.

“Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness.” (Isa 30:8)

instruction to Isaiah to record the prophecy.

“This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel , says: `Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you.” (Jer 30:1,2)

similar instruction to Jeremiah.

“Write these down before them so that they may be faithful to its design and follow all its regulations.” (Ezek 43:11)

similar instruction to Ezekiel.

“Then the LORD replied: “Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets” (Hab 2:2)

ditto Habakkuk.

d) God inspired men by the Holy Spirit

Much of the time in the Bible it is assumed that God’s Spirit inspired the writers to write as they did.

For those who are not Christians and who do not know the experience of being inspired by God, the nearest you might come to is a poet or author being inspired to write poetry or a story because of moving circumstances that they have experienced.

In the case of the Bible, it is not merely moving circumstances, but the moving of the person of the Holy Spirit. Occasionally that is expressly recorded:

“The Spirit of the LORD spoke through me; his word was on my tongue. The God of Israel spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me: `When one rules over men in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God ” (2 Sam 23:2,3)

David’s awareness.

“Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet 1:20,21)

Peter spoke about it as a regular experience.

“David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit , declared: ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand” ‘ (Mk 12:36 where Jesus quotes David in Psa 110:1)

Jesus himself cited David saying he was being inspired by the Holy Spirit.

e) Unaware involvement – again

Which takes us back to our starting point again. Thus we may read, for example:

“Moses then wrote down everything the LORD had said.” (Ex 24:4)

Here Moses was not instructed but it appeared a ‘natural’ response, a thing it was sensible to do.

Daniel makes an interesting comment:

“in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the LORD given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years” (Dan 9:2)

i.e. Daniel already had Jeremiah’s writings and considered them part of holy Scripture, the word of God which he could rely upon.

In Nehemiah we find the practice of Israel indicating their attitude towards the Scriptures:

“They stood where they were and read from the Book of the Law of the LORD their God ” (Neh 9:2)

and they prayed:

For many years you were patient with them. By your Spirit you admonished them through your prophets” (Neh 9:30 )

and also:

“all these now join their brothers the nobles, and bind themselves with a curse and an oath to follow the Law of God given through Moses the servant of God and to obey carefully all the commands, regulations and decrees of the LORD our Lord.” (Neh 10:29)

thus they clearly believed the Law they had written down had come from God.

In the New Testament we find the classic example:

“since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you.” (Lk 1:3)

The nature of the writing presupposes that he was in fact being inspired or prompted by God to do this writing.

Why did God order Israel to sacrifice innocent animals?

Question: Why did God order Israel to sacrifice innocent animals?
In the Old Testament God seems to delight in instructing the Israelites to kill animals and offer them as sacrifices to him.  Is this the act of a loving, humane and kind God????

Answer:

As with most of these answers to difficult questions we want to try and avoid a quick, glib answer. If you are an animal lover, and many of us are, this question seems hard at first sight.

What we’d like to do is try and give you the big picture of God and animals, and so that means going back to the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and then following references to animals through to the time of the Law given through Moses, and later to the time of Jesus.

1. Animals at the Beginning

In the Creation description in Genesis, chapter 1, we find that when God made all the living creatures on the earth he made them vegetarians (see Gen 1:29-31) and His creation was very good.

In other words, no creature lived off other creatures. There was not what we call today, “the food chain”, and nature was not “red in tooth and claw”.

2. Animals at the End

When the prophet Isaiah was prophesying about the end of time when Jesus will have restored peace and harmony to all creation, he gives a beautiful picture of man and the animals living in total harmony (see Isa 11:6-9)

In other words, part of the work of God is ultimately to restore His creation to what it was at the beginning – unless you see these verses simply as a figurative passage explaining the peace to come.  The former interpretation is more likely as it matches God’s original design.

3. Animals In-Between

So what went wrong?  Why do we have animals killing animals, and people killing animals?  The answer is Sin, that tendency now within every human towards self-centredness and the exclusion of God.

In Genesis we find the story of what we call the Fall, the fall of God’s first two perfect human beings, who gave way to the temptation to disobey God.

The result of that Fall was momentous and is spelled out in that chapter: a breakdown in relationship between them and God (Gen 3:8-10), a breakdown between them and each other (Gen 3:12), a breakdown between them and animal life (Gen 3:13-15) and a subsequent change in physical life and experience (Gen 3:16-19).

However, also at that time there was a significant event that took place.  Because part of the fall of this couple involved their growing guilty self-awareness (Gen 3:10,11), God in both his compassion and His desire to convey a truth to us, provided them with clothing, which came from the skins of animals.

In other words an animal or animals had to die to “cover” these fallen humans.

A few chapters later we are told that the sin of the growing world population was now so great that it grieved God that he had made them at all.

While bringing judgement to limit or restrict this growth of evil, in the form of the Flood (Genesis chapter 6), God was careful to continue the life of the earth by both man and beasts.

However, after the Flood when God reiterates His desire for mankind to increase (Gen 9:1, reflecting Gen 1:28), He tells them that the fear of them will fall on all other living creatures, and they will also become food for the humans (Gen 9:2,3).

Now we are not told why this should be but it is probable that the fear that had come into the world at the Fall now extended to fear between man and the rest of creation and fear between the creatures themselves.

Why?  Perhaps it was that the other living creatures had an inherent sense of the thing called Sin that still prevailed in mankind, and the fear of man in them grew. Fear breeds fear and so it is probable that the fear spread from fear of man to fear of one another.

Perhaps it was from that point on that the stronger preyed on the weaker.  It was obviously from this point that nature became “red in tooth and claw”, and once there was death created by animals, there could also be death of animals brought about by man.

Recap:

Before we move on to consider the question of sacrifices, it is perhaps worth noting that because of man’s now inherent sinfulness, death of animals was quite usual – both animals being killed by animals and animals being killed for human food.

We will continue in this study to look at sacrifices because of the amazing truths that are revealed there.

4. Sacrifice of Animals

i) Abel’s Offering

Although we have not touched on it so far, the practice of sacrificing an animal is actually recorded after the Fall and before the Flood, in that Abel brought an animal offering as an act of worship to God (Gen 4:4).

We are not told why he or his brother brought a sacrifice, merely that it happened.  However, the indication within the story is that Abel thought about it and did it carefully as a sacrifice that cost him something, something he wanted to give completely to God.  The first picture of a sacrifice is that it is something given totally over to God as an act of worship.

ii) Noah’s Offering

Similarly Noah presented an animal sacrifice to God (Gen 8:20) after the Flood. Both these sacrifices appear to have received God’s approval, more probably for the heart that was behind the giving than the fact of it being an animal being put to death.

iii) Abraham’s Sacrifice

Years later, in the story of Abraham’s relationship with God, we find the Lord instructing him to sacrifice three animals and two birds, as part of a significant act of covenant making (Gen 15:6-10).  Note that Abraham did not do this to win favour with God, because he already had God’s approval (v.6), but more to increase the sense of solemnity in this procedure.

iv) The Passover Sacrifice

The next significant sacrifice to be mentioned is that of a Lamb at the original Passover (Exo 12:1-13). This was to be partly as food (v.4,8) and partly so that the blood of the lamb could be used as a marker on the doorposts of each house (v.7,13)

Before leaving the Passover sacrifice, it is worth noting that when John the Baptist referred to Jesus, he referred to him as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)  Similarly in the Revelation, John the writer sees Jesus in his vision, standing in heaven as a lamb that had been slain (Rev 5:6)

The writer to the Hebrews similarly speaks about Jesus’ death on the Cross as a sacrifice to take away our sins. (Heb 9:26-28,  10:10).  So what is the significance of a sacrifice?  To answer that we have to look at the Law that God gave Israel in respect of sacrifices.

v) The Law of the Sacrifice

While Israel wandered in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, God gave them a whole range of laws to govern their life as the people of God.  Some of those Laws were about how to restore their relationship with God after they had sinned.

In the book of Leviticus we find the Laws for the various offerings to be made to God (Lev. 1-7). One specific offering was called the “Sin Offering” and had to be made after a person sinned, e.g. Lev 4:27-29

In those verses we see various things:

1. The sinner was guilty – no excuses!  v.27

2. He was to take an animal as his offering – it’s going to cost him!  v.28

3. He was to put his hand on it’s head as it was killed – he was to identify with it, as if saying, this animal is taking my punishment for what I have done. v.29

4. He was to kill it himself – no cop-out – YOU do it!  v.29

Put simply like that we don’t catch the awfulness of what was happening. Look again!
While the priest held the animal steady, you the sinner put and kept your hand on its head, and then took a knife and YOU cut its throat!  YOU stood there and watched while the blood of this animal drained away and it eventually collapsed and died. YOU did this!  YOU were the cause of this!  YOUR sin caused the life to be taken from this innocent animal.  If you hadn’t done wrong this wouldn’t have been necessary!

Why was it necessary? For you to come to understand the awfulness of Sin!

We’re sorry if that is upsetting but that is what happened. How would you have felt at the end of it?  Sick probably!  Suddenly you see how serious sin is in the all-seeing eyes of God.

He knows its terrible effect on our lives, and how it separates us from His total goodness. He knows its potential to keep you from Him in eternity.  That’s how awful it is.

Tragically we live in an age where we have been told that “right is only that which is right for you”.  Wrong!  Right is what God says it is, how He has designed us to be, and more importantly wrong is what God says it is, contrary to the way He has designed us!

How do we deal with this sin, this guilt of ours?

1. We go to the lamb that God has provided – Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2. As we declare our belief in him and in what he did, it is like we put our hand on the head of the animal and identify with it.
3. We recognise that as part of the human race we helped put him to death on the Cross (we would have been part of it if we’d been there two thousand years ago – either by remaining quiet or by participating in it in some way!)  We affirm that we put the animal to death.
4. We ask for God’s forgiveness on the basis that our Sin and guilt has been transferred to the lamb, Jesus.
5. We receive His forgiveness, and go and live a life filled with the love of God, determined that the old life where sin reigned will be no more.   We receive His Holy Spirit, His power to live new lives.

This is what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about. This is what the sacrificial system was pointing forward towards.

Conclusions

1. God made the world at peace and in total harmony.
2. When we, the human race, decided to exercise our free will it was to disobey God. This is called Sin.
3. That Sin released a whole series of consequences on the earth,  which involved the death of animals by each other and for food for humans.
4. At the end of time God will restore that original peace and harmony.
5. In the meantime, the sacrificial system of the Old Testament period pointed forward to the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who died in our place.
6. Thus no longer do such sacrifices need to be made. We are simply to receive the outworking of this particular sacrifice and live in the goodness of it.

Why did God order Israel to kill men, women and children?

Question: Why did God order Israel to kill men, women and children?
In the Old Testament there are a number of instances of God telling Israel to completely wipe out the peoples who inhabited the land called Palestine (e.g. Deut 7:1-4,16,24).  Doesn’t that make the God of the Old Testament a harsh and unjust God, completely different from the God of love portrayed in the New Testament?

Answer:

If we are to adequately answer this we will have to give careful consideration to what the Bible says.

To understand this apparent situation we need to understand:
a) the nature of God
b) the nation of Israel and the surrounding nations
c) the options of the inhabitants.

a) The Nature of God

The Bible’s descriptions of God are not at variance between Old and New Testaments.

For example in the Old Testament we find God saying, “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” (Ezek 18:5)

In the New Testament, we find the apostle, Paul, writing “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).

However, in the Old Testament we also find God declaring, “I take no pleasure in the death of anyone” (Ezek 18:32).

Similarly in the New Testament, we find the apostle, Peter, writing about God, “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish.” (2 Peter 3:9)

Now in both testaments, the way to avoid death was quite clear:

“Repent and live!” (Ezek 18:32) and “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

For the moment that will be enough about God:

• sin will be punished by death
• God doesn’t want death to come to man
• death is avoided by repentance, turning away from the sin.

b) The Nation of Israel and the Surrounding Nations

i) Israel

Israel were a nation created by God, starting from Abraham, then through Isaac and finally through Jacob, who was renamed Israel by God.  While in Egypt the families grew over about four hundred years to become the equivalent of a nation of well over a million people.

At the Exodus (see Exodus, chapter 1 to 12) God took them out of Egypt and meeting with them at Mount Sinai created a new nation out of them who would be a special people, specifically related to God (see Exodus 19).  The objective of this was to show the world the possibility of a nation being led and guided by God, i.e. to act as a light to the rest of the world, revealing the goodness of God and His plan for His world.

To achieve this possibility God instructed them to remove all the existing inhabitants of the land in order to create a new national identity.

ii) The Surrounding Nations

When we look at the people that Israel were told to destroy, we are told they were to be destroyed because of their wickedness (Deut 9:4), and because they worshipped idols and would turn Israel to those idols and away from God (Deut 7:4,16).

The picture we are given is of nations in possession of the land God had promised Israel, who were totally established in worshipping idols and all of the practices that went with that (e.g. sacrificing children).

From the beginning of the Bible we are shown mankind that has a propensity to turn away from God and turn to all kinds of foolish life styles that can only be described as pagan and uncivilised in the extreme!

This propensity to turn away from God is what the Bible calls ‘Sin’ and because Sin is living contrary to the design of the Creator, it means that such people live utterly destructive life styles.

Because mankind seems to be tainted with this tendency, it also spreads like a virus unless checked. If it is left unchecked, the moral direction of any society is downwards, as our own society is showing at the beginning of the twenty first century.

iii) Israel’s folly

God knew that if Israel simply went into the land and mingled with the idol worshippers there, they would soon be led astray by them. Hence the objective of removing all the existing inhabitants.

Today we understand the need to destroy Cancer cells before they destroy the body.  We may not understand it because we don’t understand the awfulness and destructiveness of Sin, but what we are considering in this question is a surgical operation.

A number of the wars fought in the last century and, indeed, in this century, have been those fought to prevent something worse happen.  This is what was behind God’s instructions to Israel (but wait until you get to Part c) below before you make a final judgment!)

In fact this mingling with the idol worshippers did happen, even while Israel were wandering in the desert on the way to the land (see Numbers 25:1,2).

After Israel had settled in the land and after their leader Joshua had died, they quickly gave way to this tendency again (e.g. Judges 2:10-13).

In fact so often did they give way, that eventually the Lord allowed the inhabitants who had not been cleared out of the land to remain to act as a thorn in Israel’s side to continually bring them to their senses (see Judges 2:18-23)

There followed a continuing cycle in their early centuries in the land: apostasy (e.g. Judges 3:7) – disciplinary judgment (Judges 3:8) – repentance (Judges 3:9a) – deliverance from God (Judges 3:9b,10) – peace (Judges 3:11).

c) Options of the Inhabitants

Returning now to our original question, we must look at the possibilities that were given to the inhabitants, which fit in with all that we have said so far.

There were actually three options:

Option No.1 – To leave the Land
There was nothing to stop the inhabitants leaving the land and this some did.

Option No.2 – To join Israel
Some of the inhabitants actually joined the people of Israel and this was perfectly acceptable. Examples of this were Rahab, a spy-prostitute (Joshua 6:25), and the Gibeonite tribe (read Joshua 9).

Option No.3 – To resist God and Israel and die
This did happen for a number – but it was their choice!   Similarly today as we saw in 2 Peter 2:9 the choice of death is a personal choice and NOT what God wants.

Our Difficulty in Understanding

We need to understand and hang on to the basic reasoning behind the instruction from God to destroy any unbelieving idolaters who resisted.  It was to remove a scourge of pagan lifestyle and to do all possible to prevent Israel being corrupted. The picture given above, of Cancer, needs to be borne in mind.

Where we have a difficulty in understanding all this, it is probably because we fail to see the awfulness of Sin and its consequences.

We live very much in a Society where virtually everything goes and because of that we find it difficult to grasp the concept of wrong that is so abhorrent to a Perfect God that He has to deal with it with destructive judgment to prevent worse happening.

And that brings us right back to the subject of Jesus. To pick up again on one of the earlier verses we quoted (Romans 6:23) “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus“.

God is always wanting to bring life.    WE are the ones who refuse it and prefer death instead!
May it not be so.

(J6) How does killing people equate with a loving God?

Question: How does killing people equate with a loving God
How does love equate with judgment

Answer:

The immediate answer is, yes, God does judge individuals on occasion but to see how and why and to consider it in the light of God being a God of love, we need to consider it quite fully as follows

1. Instances where God did do this.
2. Reasons why He did it.
3. Considerations of judgment and love.

1. Instances where God did do this

Acts 12:23 Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.

• the crowd has just attributed divinity to Herod
• he failed to refute it and give glory to God.

Acts 5:9,10 Peter said to her, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.” At that moment she fell down at his feet and died.

• Ananias has just died, apparently without warning but now Peter specifically decrees it with his wife; she immediately drops dead

2 Chron 21:16-19 “The LORD aroused against Jehoram the hostility of the Philistines and of the Arabs who lived near the Cushites. They attacked Judah, invaded it and carried off all the goods found in the king’s palace, together with his sons and wives. Not a son was left to him except Ahaziah, the youngest. After all this, the LORD afflicted Jehoram with an incurable disease of the bowels. In the course of time, at the end of the second year, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great pain.”

• Jehoram had led his people into idolatry (v.11) and had also murdered all of his brothers (v.4)
• Note that the judgment came in two forms and both were slow, thus allowing Jehoram opportunity to repent.

Dan 6:26-31 “This is what these words mean: Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom”

• Belshazzar has a feast where he used goblets from the Temple in Jerusalem and almost purposefully rejects God and worships his gods (v.2-4).
• He is clearly warned by miraculous writing on the wall and then by Daniel’s words and is given time to repent.

2. Reasons why He did it

We believe that when we look at such instances there are likely to be both obvious declared reasons and not so obvious undeclared reasons.

i) Declared, obvious Reasons

Obvious reasons come with each of the instances we have considered above – the sin of the individuals concerned:

• Herod took God’s place and thus led the people very wrongly
• Ananias and Sapphira both lied to God and to the church leaders and thus gave a poor example
• Jehoram murdered his brothers and led people into idolatry
• Belshazzar rejected God publicly and worshipped idols

Those are the clearly stated reasons why God acted in each case.

ii) Undeclared, not obvious Reasons

A starting question that arises is why should God have chosen these particular individuals and not others who were often apparently far worse? The following are merely suggestions:

The Context of Example

In the Old Testament, there is a very clear, strong and obvious principle which prevails.

It is that God has created Israel to reveal Him to the nations.

How they act and how respond to the Lord will reveal to the world something of who the Lord is.

In Scripture we often come across references “for his name’s sake” or similar (e.g. Psa 23:3, 25:11, 79:9, 143:11), meaning something is to be done for the sake of God’s name that it is not to be misrepresented.

Misrepresenting God is thus considered a major sin in the Old Testament period (because, as so often seen, if people get a wrong idea about God they will not come to Him and receive His forgiveness, and blessing).

It would appear that God sometimes moved against those who failed to represent Him faithfully.

It also appears that in times of revival when the Lord is moving openly and powerfully (as in the early chapters of Acts) He also seems to raise the bar on accountability and thus Ananias and his wife are taken away.

One might add that Paul noted that Corinthians in the early church were dying because they abused the Lord (1 Cor 11:30).

In the wider context of God’s judgment coming on other nations, the reason is similarly that they abused the name of the Lord and particularly in the way they treated God’s people, Israel.

In every such case, one must remember the onlookers who would have been seriously challenged by what they had witnessed and would most likely have turned back to the Lord.

In every situation the Lord is acting for the greater good but there is possibly another reason to be considered.

The “what might have been”

The Bible reveals God as the One who knows everything, absolutely everything, and that must also include what might have been if the Lord had not stepped in.

Thus in the four examples above, we don’t know:

• what Herod might have gone on to do, leading the people further astray
• what the example of Ananias and Sapphira would have had on the early church
• what Jehoram would have gone on to do, possibly leading Judah even further astray
• what Belshazzar might have gone on to do in his growing pride, possibly moving against the Jews in his land

In other words we have to trust that God, who does know all these things, made the right decision.

3. Considerations of judgment and love.

A helpful scenario

Very often we become confused in our thinking and, in this case, see judgment and love as opposites. They are no such thing. Consider the following scenario.

Mark is a Judge in a criminal court. He is early middle-aged and is very happily married. His wife would describe him as the most loving person she knows. He has three children of varying ages, from little Nicholas, aged 4, who sits on his lap while he tells his son stories, to Jenny who is ten and runs and gives him hugs when he comes home from work, to Jake who is seventeen and who appreciates times when his dad just sits and listens to his gripes about college. All the kids would agree with their Mum’s assessment of Mark.

When he sits in his courtroom Mark is known to be fair and just. He applies the law to the best of his ability and when he is confronted by the most heinous of crimes he has no difficulty speaking his mind and about passing sentence exactly according to the Law. His judgments range from severe to mild, according to case. Back at home all that is unknown. He is just known as a loving husband and dad.

Are judgment and love opposites in the above illustration? No, they are simply two expressions of the same man. Merely because his role as a judge requires him to make judgments that affect the lives of many, often in a very negative way (a life sentence can be seen as nothing other than negative), that does not stop him being a very loving person. The two are complementary not opposites.

God’s various roles

When it comes to God, the situation is slightly more complicated. To the sinner, like the criminal in court who knows he is blatantly guilty, the presence of the Judge is a fearful thing. Now supposing the Judge stepped down from the bench and stepped into the dock and took the guilty man’s place, he would become an amazing redeemer. If he freed the man and adopted him and took him into his home he would become an amazing father. Now these are all pictures conveyed in Scripture that apply to God.

In one sense He would much rather act as a redeemer and adopting Father for “I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!” (Ezek 18:32). God is more concerned to bring life than to bring premature death, but it is dependant on the person in question. Justice is still justice and God only sets people free when they have repented and received the offer of redemption through the finished work of Christ on the Cross. Their repentance means that justice is done by Jesus carrying their sin, guilt and punishment. Justice is still worked out.

The outcome is in the hands of the sinner

Earlier on we considered the cases of Herod, Jehoram and Belshazzar, each of whom was confronted with their sin and given opportunity to repent. They knew that they faced The Judge of all men, and the sensible thing would have been to repent and receive forgiveness. But none of them did! None of these three criminals called on the mercy of the court. Thus each was sentenced, but that did not stop the Lord being loving; it just meant that He was executing his role as a Judge to dispense justice.

Possibly another aspect of this that we should observe is the Lord’s knowledge of whether this person would ever repent. We said earlier that he knows the ‘what might have been’. The Lord alone knows whether this person will ever repent and if He knows that this person will never ever repent, regardless of how long they are given, then His removing them from the planet is merely a judicial decision of justice carried out now rather than later.

Our own responses

If we do not like that, it suggests that it is more likely that we are upset because we have emotional biases against God, not because we find fault with Him as a Judge. If we don’t like His decisions and get upset by that, we reveal our own folly, because we did not know (and still do not know) the full detail of the cases in question, and perhaps have never seriously thought through the implications and possibilities of such cases. We are more willing to pontificate on the unfairness of God rather than acknowledge that we are limited in knowledge and understanding, and so reveal our pettiness, which does nothing to bring clarity of understanding to these issues.

Those of us who know of God as loving heavenly Father, know that while we hold on to stubborn, rebellious ways which we know to be wrong, there is a breakdown in relationship and we sense Him standing there as a firm disciplinarian who works to bring us to our senses. However, we also know that the moment we repent, the moment we acknowledge our need of forgiveness, He is there to restore us and bless us. We have learnt that actually the One who sometimes acts strongly against the proud, arrogant, hard-hearted, utterly selfish person, intent on evil, committed to that way for the rest of their existence, this One is also there as a gentle, loving, compassionate and caring being whose only desire is to lift us, encourage us, free us and bless us. We have learned that judgment and the expression of love are actually more dependant on the other person than on God. We have learned that we can utterly trust the wisdom and knowledge of this all-knowing, all-wise One who sent His Son to die on our behalf so we could be redeemed. It is the individual who decides whether he will face the Judge or the loving Father. There can never be any blame on the One who holds both those roles

(J5) What Specific Signs are there in the UK?

Question: What  Specific Signs are there in the  UK
If this is so, what signs of social and moral decline are there that conform to this suggested model of God’s judgment in the UK?

Answer:

The difficulty of such an analysis is that a) things change so quickly, b) these are likely to be just large brush strokes, and c) we will thus miss out important issues.

The dangers within those reading such an analysis are rejection of these things because of what we have observed to be either a) casual, careless indifference, characterized by the ‘boiling frog syndrome’ (drop a frog into boiling water and it will leap out; put it in cold water and gradually bring it to the boil and it will accept it and die), or b) naive, blind, humanistic optimism, which is often characterized by “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic’.

As in the previous question in this series, we observe that our answer is likely to be subjective but nevertheless invite you to seriously consider what is said and observe the truth of what is said as then seen in the media of today.

The key question then becomes, is there a relational link between the general behaviour of this country and the judgment of God. All we will say here, is that what follows is very similar to that observed in the Bible when the Lord lifted off His hand of restraint from a country and allowed the ‘judgment’ of unrestrained folly.

We simply note the following:

a) Family Structure Change

Change of family structure over past decades has involved the following that seem to have become acceptable, common and normal:

• divorce,
• cohabitation,
• changes of partners,
• abandoning of families by fathers

The downside of these changes include:

• great financial cost to society as abandoned mothers need support,
• abandoned partners coping with pain and anguish,
• abandoned partners coping with ongoing loss of security and lowering of self-esteem,
• children of divorces or abandonment coping with anguish of loss,
• the same children coping with living two lives if seeing both partners,
• antisocial behaviour growing in such children,
• schools, education and social services, police etc. coping with the strains of coping with these children,
• a future generation who will struggle even more to cope with parenthood and marriage based on the insecurity they have learned.

A word that is applicable over all of this change is “coping”. Partners cope, parents cope, children cope, schools cope, social workers cope, etc. Coping here means we get by – just! But it shouldn’t have to be like this.

Restraint was removed from relational behaviour in marriages and the “coping lifestyle” is the result. Modern psychologists and sociologists are now talking about the “shame” that is under-girding so many lives in modern society, meaning the deep inner feeling of failure. Slowly and gradually, voices are beginning to be heard declaring, there must be a better way.

b) Social breakdown

Whether it flows from the above or whether it flows from the gradual erosion of a ‘standards-based’ society (one that believes in right and wrong as absolutes), or a combination of the two, the result is that we find behaviour in society that was not here in this measure fifty years ago. The following are some examples which all have negative or destructive outcomes for the individual or for society:

• theft at high levels,
• violence in the streets, especially at night, at high levels,
• vandalism of property at high levels,
• drunkenness on the streets not uncommon, especially in towns at night,
• violence from football supporters still known,
• availability of drugs on the streets or in schools in large measure,
• road rage not uncommon
• rapes apparently at high levels, especially associated with drinking

It should be observed that the question here is not whether these things are on the increase at the present, but whether they have increased over the past fifty years. In most, if not all, of these cases, these things have escalated in that period of time. It is very easy to accept these things as the norm. They are not and should not be.

c) Drink, Drugs, Sex, Gambling & Debt

We’ve grouped these things together because they have each merited the attention of the government and the media in recent years as causing serious concerns:

• Alcohol abuse is high – excessive use of alcohol and the violence that accompanies it
• Drugs – the use of hard and soft drugs is escalating and is considered a national problem. Addiction is particularly a problem for need fosters crime to sustain the habit.
• Sex – the permissive lifestyle largely fostered by the media, has resulted in a major increase in most sexually transmitted diseases. The cost to individuals and the State is excessive, yet few dare suggest an alternative lifestyle. Teenage pregnancies are high as are abortions.
• Gambling – is considered to be a considerable problem for more than a few, yet the liberal policies of the recent governments have opened the door even wider.
• Debt – the figures owed by the average individual are astronomical and if they were told to our forefathers, would probably be received with outright incredulity, yet we accept it as the norm. The ongoing spin-offs of this are being felt in large measure in 2008.

d) Education, Health, Pension Services, Social Services & Justice

Again we have grouped these together because they have merited the attention of the government or the media on a regular basis over recent years, as problems facing our society for which there seem no obvious answers:

• Education – ongoing reports play up achievements, yet we are told that 1 in 5 of children leaving primary school cannot read properly. Reports suggest there are about 35,000 school leavers each year who leave without a qualification. Many schools still struggle with discipline and fail to meet Ofsted requirements. Most schools with greatest success are either private or faith-based.
• Health – Government targets, the media declare, are not being met. As the population ages the problem increases.
• Pension Services – as the population ages the financial demands are becoming out of hand. The collapse of various private pension schemes in recent decades has only exacerbated the problem. It is a problem waiting to explode and may be doing that in late 2008.
• Social Services – in the face of the growth of the variety of problems catalogued above, spending on social services has not been matched and in many places social services are grossly understaffed and unable to meet the demands upon them.
• Justice – our courts are overloaded and means are sought to speed up the system to cater with the breakdown of society and the problems ensuing. For ‘simple’ burglary police rarely even come out, maintaining that their case load is such that only priority crimes can be dealt with. Our prisons are overflowing and alternatives are sought to cope with the ever increasing numbers of those being found guilty of crimes.

Facing the Unpalatable Truth

Read any ‘broadsheet newspaper’ for a month, talk to people in each of the areas itemised above, or search the Internet, and the truth of our situation will be seen to conform to what has been suggested above.

The atheistic humanist has had his day. A society that has rejected its God (and an examination of history shows the reality of that) is now shaking at its foundations. Increasingly journalists are predicting worse to come. Increasingly research shows the folly of the ways itemised above. How long will it take us to come to our senses?

The rejection of the Christian faith in this country over the past fifty to a hundred years, has not been because it didn’t work. It was much more basic than that. It was simply that the grass over the over side of the fence looked more inviting, the grass where there was no accountability to a higher power, only to yourself.

Saying God isn’t there, does nothing except utter empty words into the air. Nothing has changed in that respect. There have always been those who declared, “There is no God!” and they have been declared fools! (Psa 14:1) They have been revealed for what they are by the fruits they produce.

The fruits of godlessness and the ensuing unrighteousness are now plan and obvious to see – well, except for those who refuse to see! Indeed it has to be a certain sort of blindness that fails to see the real state of this nation that once proudly went by the name of GREAT Britain. The Bible calls it a wilful blindness, a blindness that refuses to accept the truth, refuses to acknowledge God, is unable to hold onto goodness, and therefore a blindness that bears the fruit of self-destruction, which is in fact the judgment of God.

It’s time to come back to God. It’s time to cry out for goodness, wholesomeness, faithfulness, honesty, integrity and so much more, to be returned to our national life.

Bankruptcy

At the end of October 2008, Booker Prize-winning novelist Ben Okri wrote an article that appeared in the Times headed, “Our false oracles have failed. We need a new vision to live by.” The following is a brief extract from it which highlights what we have been saying above:

We must bring back into society a deeper sense of the purpose of living. The unhappiness in so many lives ought to tell us that success alone is not enough. Material success has brought us to a strange spiritual and moral bankruptcy.

If we look at alcoholism rates, suicide rates and our sensation addiction, we must conclude that this banishment of higher things from the garden has not been a success. The more the society has succeeded, the more its heart has failed.

Everywhere parents are puzzled as to what to do with their children. Everywhere the children are puzzled as to what to do with themselves. The question everywhere is, you get your success and then what?

What was sad about this article was that, although there were various Biblical references, there was nothing about the spiritual bankruptcy that has brought about the other things.

(J4) What General Signs are there in the UK?

Question: What General Signs of these things are seen in the United Kingdom?
How do you say this has happened in the UK?

Answer:

This is going to be a very subjective answer and you may well disagree with what follows, but we simply ask you to think about what is said here and see if it ‘fits’ with what is appearing in the media on a regular basis.

i) The move towards godlessness

There are signs of this in other so-called advanced Western nations, but we will focus on the United Kingdom here. The first stage of decline, we said, was godlessness, a turning away from God. A century ago, people referred to Britain as a Christian nation; no longer so. What they meant by that was that, as a nation at least, we adhered to a Christian value system based on a knowledge of God through Jesus Christ. This was not to say that the nation was perfect, or especially religious, merely that the general underlying foundation was as just described.

Forces of modernism, unable to be countered by weak theologians at the time, meant a rise in scepticism and a fall in confidence in the church. After two world wars, the fifties and sixties saw a youth and music revolution which, alongside a gradual technology revolution, further challenged traditional religious belief. The eighties saw the arrival of the computer revolution and the nineties saw ever increasing affluence and materialism. Much of the church retreated into an enclave to preserve the religious ways of life that were now being abandoned rapidly by the majority.

Although the church was revived in small measure by the renewal movement, the charismatic movement, the Restoration movement, Toronto Blessing, and the advent of Alpha Courses, by and large, the majority of the nation remained untouched and church attendance figures continued to fall among all except the ‘new’ churches and black churches. Attendance on a Sunday morning varies from 3 to 7% depending on who you believe.

In the new millennium, parts of the church have been working into the community as has rarely been seen for a long time yet, numerically at least, there is little change for the nation at large. Although about three quarters of the population would declare a belief in God, that is a passive belief with no practical outworking. As a nation therefore, we have rejected God.

ii) The Advance of Unrighteousness

Unrighteousness should not be seen as a simply religious concept. It has its origins with God and relates to God, but it is a practical word that refers to living in ways that are out of kilter with God’s design, contrary to it. The Bible declares that God designed and created this world, including the people on it. That design means that, in the same way that say Ford design a car to work in a particular way, so God has made human beings to ‘work’ in a particular way, and when they refuse to do that, they ‘break down’. With the arrival of godlessness, that can be observed in a variety of forms of social breakdown.

We now consider some of those observed forms of social breakdown, especially in the light of our earlier comments on them being expressions of God’s unrestrained-sin form of judgement, that go from one level of self-destruction to another. What follows is only a random selection which will only receive a very shallow comment in order to simply paint an outline picture rather than a fully detailed and conclusive panorama. To maintain this as simply an overview exercise, we will not quote statistics but will simply suggest that they are there, and the comments being made are made in the knowledge of those figures. They are there on the Internet if you wish to go looking for them.

(J3) How does a Society decline?

Question: How does a society decline to then bring God’s gradual judgement?
What are the stages of decline that brings God’s attention and activity?

Answer:

Stages of Decline of a Society

The first stage in any society’s decline is godlessness. Jeremiah explained it prophetically thus as a word from God: “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jer 2:13). The first sin was the abandoning of God – They have forsaken me. This is godlessness, the rejecting and ignoring of God.

The second stage is always unrighteousness, wrong behaviour. In the graphic language of Jeremiah’s prophecy, it is that having turned away from God who is the source of all life, they seek to create structures, or schemes, or philosophies or whatever, that can sustain their godless lives – and have dug their own cisterns. This is exactly what atheistic, materialistic humanism does.

Observe any society and these will be preliminary signs of decline – a  nation that ignores God and relies on  its own  efforts (godless), and which then subsequently adopts  behaviour patterns contrary to God’s design for humanity (unrighteous).