WISDOM FROM HISTORY

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I was much impressed this week as once again I came across the proclamation by Abraham Lincoln when faced with national chaos in the midst of the American civil war. I was struck by the sheer spiritual stature of the man and equally struck by the spiritual stature of the members of the American Senate. It was a remarkable outburst of the spiritual DNA of so many of the first settlers on that Atlantic sea board: that DNA was a simple but real faith in the God who brought them to, and watched over them in their new land. It is printed in full for your consideration, some parts are highlighted in bold print, and at the end I have made a few concluding comments. I hope it speaks to you and challenges you afresh in the same way I found it challenging me. It is much more than just a bit of history!

 A Proclamation

By the President of the United States of America

For a Day of Prayer and National Humiliation

Fasting and Prayer *

(* This was made in 1863 in the middle of the very bitter American Civil War)

 

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation.

And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behoves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln William H. Seward, Secretary of State.

Comment

As the President stated, blessing on any nation is tied to its acknowledgment that God is its Lord. This is the same for individuals. Faith and trust in God accompanied by obedience to the standards he has set before humanity is the royal road and only road to blessing, national or personal. When we jettison God we jettison our blessing, for God rules the world and its nations on his own principles. This is as true for “Christian” nations as for others. Indeed for those who have known and walked in God’s ways and then deliberately turn from them and forget God, the inevitable outcome of judgement is even greater.

This is precisely the matter that the Proclamation faces up to; “We have been preserved, these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God”. Lincoln is speaking for the nation as a whole, the nation as it had become before the outbreak of hostilities. He clarifies the situation with the words, “We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!”

 There could not be a more prescient and accurate statement to describe our own present situation in our own nation at this time in its history. We are not in the midst of a civil war, but we are certainly in the midst of something akin to political civil war with turmoil, confusion “drawn daggers” and treachery. The hope of strong leadership that did seem to be present at one point has now been broken. The outlook is very bleak and threatening. The real tragedy, however, is that there is at this time no one of the spiritual ilk of Lincoln in national leadership, no phalanx of spiritual thinking such as was present in the U.S. Senate when it formulated the Proclamation and laid bare the real heart of the national problem. With us there has been not only a forgetting of God and his ways, but a deliberate embracing of a secular anti-God position along with a dilution and discarding of his moral commands. Indeed the marginalisation of our Christian heritage has begun and is fast increasing. Judgement stares us in the face, judgement that could cost Christians dearly.

This presents the church of God with a massive challenge, for there is nothing left but the church. There is no room for a “National Day of Prayer” of the kind Lincoln proclaimed; we simply do not have the required spiritual capital left at the national level. The church has to step in. It requires two things of the church: a prophetic voice in the nation that refuses to be silenced and a recourse to prayer of a kind we have not been generally used to. The real danger, however, is that we have not yet fully woken up to a full grasp of what the current chaos will lead to. Until we do wake up to the position the motivation to such prayer will simply not be there.

 

Bob Dunnett

 

To be continued

A PROPHET WRESTLES WITH JUDGEMENT

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“I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if you were told. I am raising up the Babylonians” Hab. 1:5-6       

“Does he who disciplines nations not punish?” Ps 94:10

Habakkuk, the prophet, was a godly man who had a deep hatred for violence and injustice (Hab. 1:1-3). But unhappily, he saw both violence and injustice all round him in his own nation of Judah. Distressed he was driven to cry out to God for help for his nation (intercession is the primary function of the prophet!). He wanted to see wickedness, law breaking and strife removed. He understood the fact that God hated evil and would judge it, and he was longing that the evil-doers in the nation might be judged and removed so that life might be peaceful and godly. That’s what he was praying. There are many such people in our own nation, for whom we should be profoundly grateful.

However, God did not answer in the way he wanted. His prayers were heard, of course, and God spoke to him because he was praying. But what Habakkuk heard was something that he found incredibly difficult to accept or understand. Indeed God began to speak to him by telling him to “watch the nations” and saying, “I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if it were told you”. God went on to reveal to Habakkuk that He was raising up the terrifying nation of Babylon (1:5ff). Furthermore, though Habakkuk already knew what the Babylonians were like, God actually spelt out just what a terrifying power they were; “They are a feared and dreaded people ….. They all come intent on violence …. They mock kings and scoff at rulers … They laugh at all fortified cities …. Guilty people whose own strength is their God”. It is not clear whether God himself actually said Babylon was going to be a judgement on Judah, but, in a sense He did not need to. Habakkuk himself instantly recognised that the intention was that Babylon would be an instrument of judgement and purging, and, worse, that Judah would be in the line of fire; he said to God, “You, LORD, Have appointed them to execute judgement; you, my Rock, have ordained them to punish”.

Even as he spoke it out, however, Habakkuk immediately protested to God at such a thought; how could it possibly be right that such a nation as Judah should be so afflicted? Even if it was full of faults it was nothing as remotely as evil and violent as Babylon. (vv12-13). If God had said he was going to use Babylon against nations other than Judah probably Habakkuk might have grimly accepted God’s word. But Judah was a different matter!

There are really three or four issues raised by this prophetic conversation. The first is fairly simple, but not always appreciated in modern thinking, even in modern Christian biblical thinking, and that is that God punishes nations. He watches them, he blesses and protects them, but he also judges and punishes them in disciplinary fashion. The latter fact is very adeptly summarised by the psalmist, “Does he who disciplines nations not punish?” (Ps 94:10). God is deeply interested in what nations, and their leaders, do, and he responds to what he sees. Habakkuk had no problem with understanding this. For many of us, however, so saturated in the modern liberal historical rationality, this sort of thinking can be quite a leap. But there can be no proper estimate of the direction of world affairs without this essential biblical perspective. The scripture that stands out so pertinently in this respect and demands our attention is “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people”.

The second issue raised by Habakkuk relates to the severity of the judgement that God meats out to the nations. Habakkuk found this a problem. He was very much aware of the nature of the Babylonian “war machine”, its uncompromising cruelty towards the people it attacked, its complete annihilation of cities, its devastation of the countryside, and its ruthless deportations. If this were loosed on Judah nothing would be left. How could God do such a thing? War of this kind was probably the worst kind of judgement. Habakkuk could not believe God could do such a thing or be responsible for it. The natural horror of such a happening seemed to blind him to the fact that Judah’s sister nation, Israel, had been overwhelmed by an equally cruel Assyria in precisely this manner a few decades previously and it still lay for the most part devastated and deserted. Perhaps Habakkuk had accepted that conquest as a judgement because he had never realised the sheer horror of the event, nor did it directly affect him. But now he did realise how horrific was the idea of Babylonians coming to Judah. The sheer thought of it was more than he could handle. That is precisely the problem that we ourselves find so difficult when we come to contemplate the judgements of God. How can God allow such appalling distress and suffering? At such times we need to recollect that God is always “slow to judge” and reluctant to punish, that he speaks judgement through tears because he knows the pain it will bring; and even more that in judgement he frequently offers restoration. But the main lesson needs to be learned; God’s judgements can be very severe indeed. And from a disciplinary point of view they are necessary to remove the rot, in this case the idolatry of Judah. The history of every nation bears very adequate testimony to such severity of judgement. God is very severe on unrighteousness, and the discipline required needs to be very hard. It is probably one of the most difficult lessons we have to learn, and we wrestle to receive it. Such was the experience later of Jeremiah when he sat among the ruins of Jerusalem after the Babylonians had actually laid it and its people waste.

The third issue (and the most difficult for Habakkuk) is that an outright evil nation (Babylon) could become the scourge of a nation (Judah) that was much less evil. God gave Habakkuk some re-assurance on this matter by showing him that Babylon would in its turn be judged and that unlike Judah would never be restored. Habakkuk was able to hang on to the eventual restoration of his nation. The total destruction of nations is not frequent but neither is it unknown biblically. It has happened, but for the greater part the judgements on nations for all their severity remain disciplinary.

To say that Habakkuk “hung on to the restoration of Judah” is actually to belittle his eventual position after all his wrestling. At the very end of his prophetic writing he accepts the judgements and God’s purposes, and says that, whatever devastations and shortages may come with the judgements, “I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my saviour” (3:17-19). If he did in fact live to see the destruction of Jerusalem no doubt that resolution would have been severely tested, but looking at the dark future before his own generation he was determined to live in the joy and strength of his God. There can be no better or more positive determination than that, and no more well-founded and realistic determination than that. “God is our refuge and strength”. When we look round the world and the nations at the present time we can make no greater resolution than Habakkuk’s.

 

Bob Dunnett

HE IS RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA!

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At the very heart of the Christian faith is the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. Whatever else we may believe about Jesus, if we have not grasped this truth in our hearts we do not have an authentic faith, indeed our faith is meaningless. Paul the Apostle made this point very clearly when he wrote to the Corinthian church: “if Christ has not been raised’ our preaching is useless and so is your faith”; “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:14, 17). For Paul all hope of sins forgiven and resurrection to glory is pinned on the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, bodily and actually. Our faith can never be reduced to a moral code, no matter how crucially important it is for humanity to live by a moral law. It is much bigger than that. The resurrection speaks directly of the need of a new dynamic that makes genuine moral living possible, and provides that dynamic. It also speaks, on a much bigger canvas, of God’s ultimate purpose for humanity in a resurrection after death and in a redeemed new creation, human and natural.

What this means for us as Christians is that we need to have a grasp of this truth at the deepest level and not settle for an uncertain acquiescence in an inherited doctrinal formula. We need to walk increasingly in the reality of this truth and we must constantly wipe away anything that dulls a clear apprehension of it and robs us of the warmth, joy and hope that it releases in our spirit. There is nothing more releasing and heart-warming than a personal knowledge of eternal life to come (and thankfully, not in this world!)

It is good to know, however, that in grasping this truth we are not simply left to believe in the resurrection of Jesus as a matter of blind faith, as many people, Christians included, often suppose. The contrary is true. There are very definite ways in which we can know that Jesus is indeed alive and walking with us. We need to be aware of these different ways and learn to walk in the assurance that they bring. These ways are focused on what we can and should be experiencing of the risen Jesus in our lives now, and they are clearly demonstrated in the gospel stories of how Jesus revealed his resurrected presence to his disciples. They are not focused on any historical discussion of evidences for the resurrection. I have space to comment on only two of these ways on this blog, but in due course there will time I hope to comment on others.

On the afternoon of the resurrection two disciples were walking to the village of Emmaus. The crucifixion and the reported events around the tomb of Jesus earlier that day had left them completely bruised and perplexed. As they discussed these events Jesus drew near, and without revealing his identity entered into their conversation. He then proceeded to give them what was in effect a bible study, taking them through all the Old Testament scriptures which prophesied and explained the need of his death and resurrection. The length of the journey was limited, but the time spent on it was not; it was clearly a very exhaustive, engaging and profound study. When they had reached Emmaus they pressed him to stay for a meal and he agreed. His identity was still unknown to the disciples. At some point Jesus took bread and pointedly broke it before them. As he broke the bread they realised who he was, and he disappeared. Instantly they reversed their steps to Jerusalem to share with the apostles what had happened.

The interesting question here is why he kept his identity hidden from them until he had given them the bible study and broken the bread? It becomes more interesting in the light of the fact that later on the same evening he appeared to the apostles and followed an exactly opposite sequence. On that evening the apostles were together and actually listening to the two disciples sharing their experience on the Emmaus road when Jesus simply appeared in their midst. It was an immediate, direct, physical and recognisable appearance. For a moment they thought they were seeing some kind of spirit, but Jesus quickly showed them that he was indeed Jesus, raised from the dead. He let them touch and feel him, and actually ate food with them. Thus they came in the most direct and literal of ways face to face with the resurrected Jesus bodily. All the doubts and confusion that had accumulated during the day gave way to mingled joy and amazement. Having physically established his identity, Jesus then went on to turn their attention from his physical presence to the Scriptures. He showed them from Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms all the prophetic Scriptures that spoke of himself; his ministry, his death, his resurrection and his future intentions for all the nations.

It is not merely an interesting matter as to why he should have chosen to keep his identity concealed in the afternoon encounter, but a very instructive matter. After Jesus had disappeared so suddenly  at the supper and the two disciples were discussing between themselves what had happened to them on the journey to Emmaus, they agreed on one thing: “were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us”. “Burning” is a very expressive word! As they had listened to Jesus the revelation, relevance and truth of the Scriptures literally seemed to have been inwardly setting them on fire with new light and understanding; Jesus’ exposition was giving the disciples the answers they so desperately needed to hear and giving them so clearly and powerfully. In this they were learning a crucial lesson for the future; Jesus could make the scriptures relevant in the most astounding way. He could make truth that was buried, so to speak, become intensely alive. Jesus would eventually ascend into heaven and would no more be seen, but the scriptures would remain and his ability through his Spirit to make them “burn” would also remain. The lesson was that they needed now to look to the Scriptures and gain strength and wisdom through them and trust him to bring light to them through his Spirit. This was not something that would be given to everybody, but it would certainly be given to those who loved him and followed him.

Perhaps one of the greatest comforts that followers of Jesus have had through the centuries is that of reading the scriptures and finding that from time to time they do actually burn very deeply into the heart, especially at times when, like those two disciples, we are downcast, perplexed, distressed or in need of some wisdom. At all times the scriptures strengthen and illuminate, but there are special moments when, through the Holy Spirit, they have that extraordinary “Jesus touch”; they “burn”. When we experience these moments it is no human imagining at work but a divine reminder of a living Saviour who himself laid such extraordinary weight on the importance of Scripture speaking to us. He is still the living Jesus of the Emmaus road.

A further and complementary thought, however, to contemplate. Why did Jesus choose at Emmaus to reveal himself through the breaking of bread at a very simple homely meal? Why, on the first day of his resurrection, did he pick up so obviously on something that he had made the centre of his last supper meal with his disciples?  Amongst other things, he was obviously making it clear that they were not to forget what he had told them to do. He was investing the breaking of bread with great importance – he was making it a medium of revealing his presence. Perhaps we should seek to be rather more aware of that fact and look more for his “touch” as we “do this in remembrance of Him”. Jesus as healer has again and again made himself known in the breaking of bread.

The scriptures and the breaking of bread are pathways to experiencing a living Jesus. They need to be approached with expectation!

Bob Dunnett

 

JOY and TEARS – The Approach to Easter

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What a wonderful time Easter is! Spring lambs, longer days, first buds, and here in the South West masses of incredibly colourful daffodils. But, of course, the real glory is undoubtedly in the Easter story: a panorama of the most momentous events in the life of Jesus. It’s a prime time for meditation and reflection. So I thought for this blog I would reflect on the beginning of that Easter story. This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday, bringing us the first act of that great Easter drama and a particular relevance to the main theme of this web-site. As Luke records, it has two distinct phases or pictures; the first involves much rejoicing, the second involves profound tears. Generally we tend to speak of the first (and why not!) but neglect the second. It is important, however, to look at both.

Jesus began the Palm Sunday proceedings in what was a truly dramatic manner. He took the colt of a donkey, sat on it and proceeded to ride into Jerusalem. In so doing he was making a clear and open prophetic statement; he was Israel’s king and Messiah, and he was fulfilling the word of Zechariah, “See your king comes to you … lowly and riding on a donkey” (Zech. 9:9). He was surrounded by a crowd of disciples. What followed during that ride was an intolerable affront to the religious establishment, but a matter of great joy to his disciples. Both parties, it would appear were much aware of the implications of what Jesus was doing.

The crowd of disciples added something important to the fulfilment of the word of Zechariah, for that word included the call to “Rejoice greatly”. The crowd was a very large crowd, so Matthew tells us, and it was immensely exuberant and did indeed rejoice greatly! They people threw their coats on the road before the donkey, they spread palm branches on the road and they were shouting out aloud with great affirmations of their king Messiah, “Hosanna to the Son of David”. Like King David of old, they may well have danced and leapt!  It was enough to cause a great stir in the city, with people wanting to know who this person on the donkey was. On reflection this huge, unprecedented burst of praise seems clearly to have been something more than a purely human response; the jubilation has all the hallmarks of the presence of the Spirit of God on it. God was there in that great crowd adding his witness to his Son.

Luke tells us what was at the heart of their rejoicing, “They began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen” (Lk 19:37). Most of them were probably from Galilee where Jesus had done most of his miracles. They were “disciples” who had come to believe on Jesus and follow him (they were not the crowd which bellowed later in the week for Jesus’ death!). They had felt the healing touch of Jesus in many different ways, and had found new life, joy and forgiveness in following him. The Messiah they had longed for had come, and they had found him to be a man of the people, a man of righteousness, and a man of compassion, tenderness and love. Doubtless they would be sharing and strengthening each other with their experiences of Jesus, what they had seen him do and what he had done for them individually. What a wonderful pointer this occasion was to the nature of the church that Jesus would later establish; it was an embryonic glimpse of the joy, grace and peace Jesus would bring to those who would follow him in the generations to follow. It would have been a wonderful experience to have been part of it.

At that point we tend to stop the story, but Luke does not. He goes on to record that in the midst of all this acclamation and rejoicing Jesus began to weep as he approached the city. The tears were not tears of joy, but of profound sadness. Perhaps we stop at that point because the tears seem to get in the way of the upbeat rejoicing. We want to stay with the rejoicing, to go on with our acclamations of His glorious grace and kingship. Maybe Jesus felt the same! Why should he bring a sad note into such happy positive occasion? Why spoil the party with anything sombre, especially the sort of sombre warning that was to accompany the tears? Why not go straight on with the unsullied witness of that great praise march?

Well, we have to ask why the tears. Jesus was to die on a cross within days, but he was not crying on that account. The tears started to flow as he rode down from the Mount of Olives and saw Jerusalem spread out before him. The tears were for the city and what he knew was going to happen to it. The Messiah King, most likely stopping the donkey at this point, suddenly spoke prophetically over the city, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” Lk. 19:42-44. This was a devastating, unrelenting prophecy of judgement, seemingly at a most inappropriate moment, in the middle of a praise meeting,! I wonder what those nearby who heard it made of it? It was not something they would want to hear (no one likes to hear of judgement!), and the message seemed no doubt utterly bizarre, even outrageous; the destruction of Jerusalem? Impossible! Even if it were true, who would want to hear it at that point of triumphal witness to the city? Without question, however, it was a moment of revelation and prompting of the Holy Spirit. In the natural Jesus knew that already the religious leaders were planning his death, and he knew they would succeed. The city would reject his witness. In the Spirit he knew that a judgement was decreed. His tears were for what that would mean for the people of Jerusalem. He was crying for them in their blindness, crying for what they were to bring on themselves.

So we have a devastating word of judgement accompanied by tears from the Messiah who is the Prince of peace and the King of love! What a seemingly impossible combination and contradiction. The tears were, of course, genuine. The pain and heart break were deeply felt; the sadness was evident. The love he has for the people, even the people who were to reject him, was revealed very clearly in those tears even whilst he prophesied. His heart longed for their peace, and he wanted desperately to give it to them. There is not the slightest hint of any cheap vengeance here for what the people of the city would do to him. He is not eager to give them their “just deserts”. He is not thirsting for vengeance, In fact the last thing he wanted was to see judgement come. There is no hardness in his eyes, no brutality in his heart to those who will ill treat him. He weeps in distress for them, for the choice they have made and for what it will inevitably bring upon them.

Jesus reflects perfectly here the heart of his Father. God is a God of love, desperately concerned in his love to bring peace to people, even to the point of giving over Jesus to die for them in order to bring them into fellowship with him. God weeps over those who reject him, for in their rejection of him they put themselves outside of his protection and grace. Indeed the proclamation of judgement is itself designed to challenge them to repentance and to adopt the way to peace; it is not a condemnation without hope! It is with that in mind that Jesus later in the week more than once faced the Scribes and Pharisees with parables of judgement simply to show them the way of blessing.

The rejection of God in general and his purpose in Jesus in particular constitutes the greatest damage humanity can inflict on itself: it is the way to lose everything that makes life worth living. The acceptance of the living God and Jesus constitutes and releases the greatest blessing humanity we can have, a blessing that extends beyond this life. God longs to save, but people must choose. When a nation increasingly rejects God there can be only one outcome, and ours, amongst others, is moving fast in that direction.

At a personal level, I really have no desire to “spoil the party”. I have known and been blessed by the Spirit of praise and rejoicing for nearly sixty years. It’s a wonderful place to be in. I dwell in it and constantly seek to encourage others into it. But the Spirit has other promptings I’m afraid, and they must be spoken, and listened to, especially, perhaps when they are warnings.

Bob

A RECAP ON NATIONAL JUDGEMENT

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It was in the year 2000, after some years studying the Jewish prophets, that I first felt I must speak a message of a severe impending national judgement. I called it “The Amos Word”. Let me explain this “Amos word”. Prior to one of the worst national catastrophes that the Jews have ever suffered, namely the destruction in 722 BC of the historical Kingdom of Israel and its capital Samaria, God had given a word of warning to Israel that such a blow would fall. That word came through Amos, and was epitomised in a simple but remorseless and repeated pronouncement, “I will spare them no longer”. The sins calling for this destructive judgement were outlined by Amos, and his prophetic contemporaries. Reading through them I  realised they were strikingly and precisely the sins which were being so blatantly and increasingly practised in our own nation and throughout the western world. At that point I became profoundly impressed that the “Amos Word”, “I will spare them no longer”, was God’s word for our own generation. We, too, were facing a devastating cataclysm**; we would not be spared. So I spoke about this and eventually wrote a pamphlet explaining more fully this “Amos Word” and its relevance to our own times, and gave it the title “Living in Amos’ Times”.

However, it is now 2017; things appear to be very much the same, so people might happily conclude that the message was all a big mistake and just the consequence of a personal pessimistic moment that had no real substance. Certainly not many people were inclined to take note of such a message in those early days or give it more than a passing thought. It was actually difficult to find an audience! Over the years I have been left with it to ponder over and wrestle with. Perhaps by now I should be sensible and consider it as something dead and buried!

Yes, perhaps I should – except, however, for one crucial thing, and this one thing also sprang out of Amos’ own experience. It was the startling fact was that the word of judgement which Amos first preached about 750 BC was not fulfilled until some twenty five years later, in 722 BC, when the whole land of Israel was completely devastated and the nation was taken into captivity by the Assyrians, a disaster of unbelievable proportions. In other words, fulfilment only came twenty five years after the prophetic word was first spoken!

Happily, (or unhappily!), when I first spoke out this “Amos word” in 2000 I had already become aware of this time gap between word and fulfilment. In fact I wrote a pamphlet about those long years of delay and gave it the title “Countdown to Chaos”. In it I made some analysis of what was happening in those years; I felt it could be very illuminating. They were marked by a continuous increase in the very things that Amos had been warning Israel about – the gross moral decline in the nation, its increasing rejection of its traditional Jehovah religion with its strong ethical base, its love of money, its unjust accumulation of huge wealth by a few at the expense of the poor, and its ever increasing craving for drink, pleasure and high living. All these things were getting worse. These 25 years were also years characterized by a collapse of principled and wise political government. In other words instead of heeding any word of warning about the nation’s behaviour, the nation was blindly and persistently getting worse. The nation was in fact getting riper and riper for judgement. I knew that such a delay would be part of the process we were involved in.

It is important to note, therefore, that a long time delay does not mean that a prophetic word is wrong. In the case of Amos it simply meant that God was slowly setting the stage for the judgment which had been prophesied. Had the nation repented in those “25 years of grace” rather than just going on as usual, God might have mitigated the judgement (as with Jonah and Nineveh). But instead of repenting, there was hardening. So the stage was set for the eventual emergence of a very aggressive, powerful Assyria which would which would be the instrument of judgement, destruction and exile.

So, No! I do not consider the message of 17 years ago as void. On the contrary I see that everything that happened in Israel after Amos’ prophesying has been happening in our own country (and in the West generally!). We have been in a “Countdown to Chaos” of our own. Ten years after 9/11 I wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Contemporary Countdown to Chaos” in which I tried to make some assessment of what had been happening to our society over those ten years. Five features stood out: futile foreign ventures (Iraq etc.), financial crash (the fiasco of 2008), growing corruption and conflict in high places, fast moving moral degradation (especially sexually) and a growing exclusion of God (the Judeo-Christian framework collapsing). The last six years since then have seen a marked further downward trend in all those areas.

So, 17 years on, I feel a very strong need to revisit a message which I feel is ominously on course for fulfilment. I want to consider its implications in the weeks and months ahead.

I understand that there may be people reading this who struggle to make the personal direct application of Amos to our own times that I have made. For those I would simply say that the study of the Old Testament prophets for themselves will none the less be an eye opener on a panorama of how God deals with nations. He is the God of the nations and has dealings with them. The large section of the Old Testament  which is given over to the prophets is very important in our global age. Study them and let God speak through them.

Next week, in addition to the blog, the first of a two weekly Bible Page will be published on the site. It will be on the subject of “The Fear of the Lord”. Next week’s blog will explain.

Bob Dunnett

** I use the word “cataclysm” carefully and advisedly. I would use this word for such events as the wholesale slaughter of men in the trenches of W.W.1, the utter destruction of German cities and populations in W.W.2, along with the devastations perpetrated on Russia, and the appalling devastations in China following the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. Large and widespread natural disasters could also be called cataclysmic.

N.B. All the titles in bold print are pamphlets which can be read, listened to or downloaded from the website