(06-29-2010 10:32 PM)Lynne Wrote: [ -> ] (06-29-2010 02:52 PM)William Wrote: [ -> ]Quoting Hosea, or any of the other prophets, or their messages to rebellious Israel or Judah, is not the same thing as a preacher saying ""If you (Lynne, William, Luke, whoever) don't do this, God will kill your kids." One is an accurate quote of a message God delivered to a group of people; one is pauinting a false picture of God Himself.
Yes, I've been thinking about this all day and I'm starting to see the beauty of rightly dividing, which I think is relevant to this. I'd like to ask a follow-up question in the interest of sharpening my apologetic skills. Some Christians today say God caused an oil spill, earth quake, or whatever to happen to America because we're not supporting Israel, drink too much, or whatever. Obviously, some children of Christians are directly killed or harmed in these events. What is the best way to think about this and answer unbelievers?
I'll say upfront, I don't think like this, but I could be wrong. I talked with some Messianic Jews who said Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment on America for not supporting Israel enough. It frustrated me. Now I'm reading the same kind of thing on the internet regarding the current oil spill. In the case of the Messianics, I think they really believed it and were not merely saying it for political reasons.
I hope everyone understands my reasoning in creating this new thread. Dear sister Lynne's question is an example of how far afield we had come from the original subject - - - but this thread is very necessary, and can be very edifying.
Originally, Lynne, we were talking about God's judgment on individual people: does He let the baby die in order to "punish" the parents? Does he cut off a rebellious teenager's legs, like the sadistic doctor in Reagan's great film "King's Row?" I think we all agree that our God is not like that. He allows things to happen, but not as punishments.
Not punishments, but sometimes
correctives. Sometimes, when His sheep stray off the path, he can guide them, gently back into place. Sometimes, He needs to give them a painful prod. Thus, the beloved (but not much studied) verse: "Thy rod
and thy staff, they comfort me." The staff gently guides; the rod is a bit more forceful.
But He deals with
nations in different ways. The Old Testament is the record of how He does that: and He does it impartially. His fiercest judgments were on His own nation of Israel, and He usually used the "bad" nations to execute the judgment.
He still does: it's just usually more obscure. And the real reckoning is in the future. Canada and South Africa and Cambodia and New Zealand
will be judged: but that'll be in the gathering of the nations prophesied in Matthew 25. If the "bad" nations were judged immediately, right now, which of them would escape? The ghastly banana dictatorships of South America, or Iran and Saudi Arabia, have scarcely been touched, nor has North Korea.
So, when there's a horrendous tsunami in southeast Asia, I partly agree with Luke: it's not a "coincidence," because there are no coincidences in a universe governed by an omnipotent God; but it's a ... happenstance. One of the natural consequences of living in a fallen world. Remember, that tsunami was caused by an undersea earthquake, as "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. " (Rom. 8:22).
But when you introduce Israel into the equation, the tempo of God's judgment speeds up. Israel is the apple of God's eye. He who blesses Israel is blessed by God; he who
curses Israel is cursed. That's Gen. 12:3, paraphrased, and you don't have to be a Messianic Jew to believe it.
Think about that verse. It's either true, or it's a lie.
Where have we seen, not happenstance, but something like the hand of God smacking down a nation? When that nation has persecuted Israel. The Czars did it, with their pogroms; and Lenin made short work of the Czars. When Lenin's successors started doing it, God waited a few decades, and then simply allowed their "Union" to fall completely apart. And when Hitler did it....
Then comes the Zionist movement. Churchill opposed the creation of Israel with all his might and main; and, after using Britain to help defeat Hitler, God allowed the British Empire to utterly collapse: today, England is being overrun by immigrants, largely Muslim; and, notwithstanding the artificial construct they call a "Commonwealth," the empire itself is gone.
So along comes the old foul-mouthed Baptist, Harry Truman, and with the stroke of his pen, recognizes Israel, giving it an international legitimacy that even the UN can't take away. And I believe God raised up America largely for that reason, among others: to help Israel.
But that has changed now, most notably since the Carter Administration. But the "tilt toward Palestine," as diplomacy students would call it, really started under George H. W. Bush, and has continued like a snowball rolling down a hill. And I believe that Katrina, and the oil spill, and the hurricanes of the late 90's, were, to a greater or lesser degree, God's judgment on this nation. God using BP's incompetence, or Obama's treachery, to cause the spill, is no different from Him using the evil nations in the Old Testament.
If not His direct judgment, then merely an example of what happens when He utterly removes His hand of blessing from America. And we'll see more of it. America has always chosen its enemies very carefully. Today, America's greatest enemy is not Iran or North Korea: it is God Almighty.
James Melton, whose work I enthusiastically recommend, has written
a very helpful little booklet entitled
Don't Mess with Israel, which very systematically aligns America's actions against Israel with "natural" disasters. It's available online, in full.
Anyway, God's dealings with nations are different from His dealings with individuals. Why did my sister get breast cancer, and I didn't? Why have I gone through certain trials that my sister has been spared? These are the kind of questions that we always ask .... and there are answers.
