Numbers 16 made a dramatic movie scene: Moses spoke about how Korah and his buddies had defied God Himself, so their punishment should come directly from God’s own hand. Let the earth swallow them alive! And so it was.
Do you see the symbolism? Their contention was groundless; it was a lie against God and His reality. The Tectonic Plate Theory should make you feel small and humble, because there is nothing in this world — including the earth on which we stand — that cannot be altered radically at God’s whim. There is a matching symbolism in prophetic literature about stars falling from the sky and the sun and moon hiding their faces. The lights in the sky we use to keep track of the cycles of life can turn against us, too, if we push too far against God’s truth.
Korah’s Rebellion represents an attempt to reject the revelation as Moses proclaimed it. The whole business of the Covenant proposed a new theology and Korah’s cabal were trying to reassert their old pagan mythology. What you see in Korah’s public dispute reflects the heathen assumptions about a pantheon of deities who were not truly different from mankind, just a little more powerful. They were convinced that anyone who approaches a deity with the proper protocols and offerings could demand certain things from them. They were angry because they imagined that Moses was hiding the spells that anyone could have used to perform those miracles. Jehovah made it a point to say how He resented being associated with that crap. There comes a point when the blasphemy is too much, and He acts to punish the insult.
We are in just such a time in Western Civilization when God has had enough insult. We should expect the ground itself to open up and the lights in the sky to fall down on our heads. Everything people have trusted and taken for granted will show themselves more alive and variable than anyone is prepared to believe. It’s not so much the physical reality of natural disasters — though we should expect to see some of that — but the moral symbolism of being unable to trust your assumptions about reality. People will be in shock; they’ll go bonkers as the world they thought they knew rebels against them.
The only place you can find a point of anchorage is in your own soul. If the Rock of Truth is not a part of your being, then you have no place to stand, and nothing to help you keep track as reference points to reality.
Even in the best of times, for evangelism you and I often have to wait until someone experiences a personal version of that turmoil. Against their personal turmoil, you and I can stand on the Truth of God and capture their attention by how we handle chaos. We become centered on a personal sense of order and divine justice. But in these days Our Lord is yanking the earth out from under a whole civilization. There will be an awful lot of people looking for a solid anchorage and some of them will see us handling it with peace.
The issue is not that we face things with a deep passion, as if our sanity rested on accomplishing things. Rather, our sanity is the source of the passion. We know what we are called by God to try to do, regardless how it works out. Our identity is the passion we have for Our Lord’s glory, not merely all the ways it can be made to shine. One way or another, we shine for Him.
Do you remember when Jesus walked on the sea? When there was no solid ground, He floated on the surface, buoyed by His divine purpose. He was His own center of gravity. Let’s walk out there with Him.
I’ve been wondering lately why prophet Muhammad was allowed to do what he did with Islam. And didn’t get killed (old testament style). And that Islam roughly as popular as Christianity. Strange.
Recall that David in one of the Psalms referred to God as herding the Gentile nations like cattle. With Israel, the purity of revelation was a primary issue, so His interaction was quite personal. With the end of the Covenant of Moses, God’s personal interaction in human politics was finished. Now it’s all cattle-herding to the End of Time. That includes all the politics regarding Jews. It also applies to other religio-political movements.
Islam is not a religion, per se, but a mythology. If you were to visit all the different places in the world claiming Islam as their religion, you would find a radical variation in cultural expressions of that one basic mythology. Here’s a problem: That mythology is highly variable because the Koran is not just a single work, but is the collected works of several hands, each with conflicting ideas about things. Thus, the Koran is self-contradictory in ways far more jarring than one could claim to find in the Bible. Islam as a sort of civilization is no different from any other civilization; it doesn’t work too well outside a certain range of cultures. For Islam to spread much at this point requires wiping away those cultures that cannot accommodate Islam. So what we see with Islam today is that it is just another cultural mythology that results in a lot of human political activity. The West is dying, but Islam is not — at least not yet. But like the West, Islam bears the seeds of its own destruction, and its time to die has not come.
The difference is that for the Jewish mythology, it has a place all the way out to the End of Time. It is now the Synagogue of Satan, and until Satan no longer has a job, humanity will be stuck with Jews provoking endless misery on the rest of the human race. that’s the curse on Israel for rejecting the Messiah. Islam is not in that category at all. We who have embraced the Messiah rejected by the Jews will also be around for the End of Time; we bear the mission of the Covenant transferred to the Messiah. Whatever awful evil coming at us from various human mythologies and political activity, our witness will always be here. The danger is that the term “Christianity” has been hijacked by people who want to make it another civilizational mythology. It hasn’t worked too well as a paint job over the West, and whatever we see today of Western Christianity will also end with the West, but not without a prolonged thrashing and moaning.
When Christians can finally shed the Western taint, we might have a better idea of the future of Christianity as a recognizable religion. The interesting part for you and I is that we are watching some of this shift taking place. God has plans to herd people using all sorts of things, and we will be watching from inside those herds, but not as cattle who have no clue what’s going on. Jews have no clue without embracing Christ as their Messiah; Muslims have no clue at all. Westerners arose from the act of throwing clues away, so they’ll be herded to the slaughter soon. Western Christians will be given a few more chances to get a clue before their presence fades. Western Christianity is unlikely to survive what we see happening right now.
It’s time for a different brand of Christianity to arise.
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Thanks! There’s certainly a lot to be read and pondered before assuming to be on sure footing regarding spiritual/religious topics. There could be, and are, a lot of intertwining factors. Even “normal” history is difficult to understand, and it gets even more difficult when you add spiritual input. Thankfully we aren’t probably presumed to understand that much; even your daily life and immediate environment is sometimes a struggle enough.
Your questions are a blessing and treasure, Mr. T. They show a strong talent for moral inquiry.
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