History and a Time yet to Come

In the first eight verses we hear the Psalmist say, God, we are trusting in you, not in our power but only in you.  In verses 9-26, he told God, where are you?  We have not changed, we are still your people doing your will, but you have abandoned us.  You have left us as sheep to be slaughtered.

 I just read from the Prophet Malachi, speaking for the Lord in Malachi 3:6-7 he said these words to Israel, “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. ⁷ From the days of your fathers, you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?”

So dust off the Psalm and read once more chapter 44:9-26, I have no doubt the writer loves and fears God, but only God can see where others have set their hearts.  I’m in a considerable body of fellow believers, but I have no understanding of what they value, how they spend their time or if they live out their faith and fear and trust in God.  So I believe he is speaking for a nation and to make such claims is not wise, but often many who go by the name of Christ proclaim why to God.

I’ve yet to meet a person who wants to be ridiculed or be the object of others jokes, and verses 13 – 16 states that Israel had become such a nation.  And the Psalmist is saying and we have not done anything wrong, God it is all Your doing.

What I find of interest is much like the powerless church of today, they in their mind are doing the right things, as the apostle Paul states in 2 Timothy 3:1-5,

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.  People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”  Folks, I was that person, a member of a church, gave a tithe, and went more than just Easter, and Christmas, and was heading to hell, but God rescued me!

I was born in 1942, in the middle of World War I, life the world has never seen before.  Let me share a few facts about that war that was left out of my history book at school in the 50’s.  I’m taking this from Victor Davis Hanson’s book, “The Second World Wars” page 3.  “Some sixty million people died in World War II.  On average, twenty-seven thousand people perished on each day between the invasion of Poland (September 1, 1939) and the formal surrender of Japan (September 2, 1945) – bombed, shot, stabbed, blown apart, incinerated, gassed, starved, or infected.  The Axis losers killed or starved to death about 80 percent of all those who died during the war.  The Allied victors largely killed Axis soldiers; the defeated Axis, mostly civilians.”

Note: He does tell of the 100’s of thousands civilians killed in Japan by firebombing by our military and the British doing the same to areas of Germany, but the number is small compared to what the Axis did.  My point is, if you lived in that time and were experiencing it you would have believed you were living in the time the apostle Paul is referring to.  Let me be obvious it is still to come, and the stage is set as we talk, and it is organized by the one Jesus calls the thief in John 10:10.  So let me share in closing once more the words of 2 Timothy 3:1, “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice