As we come to the end of a calendar year and the beginning of a new one, I thought to write an article in thanks and praise to Yahweh Elohim. The Bible is full of praise, but this is distilled from a personal perspective.
The title comes from 1Peter 2:3 and echoes Job,
Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. (Job 23:12)
In a year where the world media is focussed on the trouble of a virus, I like many others have had other troubles, but I have tasted that Yahweh Elohim, He Who Will Be Mighty Ones is gracious and has helped.
This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. (Psalm 34:6-8)
How great is the trust we can have? We can trust to all the vast greatness of the heavens above and teeming life sustained in the seas below. To have confidence the He Who Will Be will act in our lives, we have to believe in His plentiful power to do so. This is my praise, or halleluyah. It is more than a fine sounding word, as we acknowledge the great power over our lives to help, day to day and even more so in the midnight hours, the night watches.
Towards the beginning of the year the anchor to my soul was the confidence of Psalm 19 where the great forces of the earth are controlled by God, daily.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them has he set a tabernacle for the sun, (Psalm 19:2-4)
The Psalm then goes on from the laws of the sun and planet, to Gods laws for our life. The confidence we can have is that just as He Who Will Be is in the motion of the planets so He who will be can work with us, to the motion of the atoms that make us to the law of our life. There is logic in this. Christ speaks of the hairs of our heads being numbered (Matt 10:30).
In a year the world was consumed with fear of a virus, did any seek the Great Power over all the tiniest bugs? I did. Not just the bug many feared, but all other bugs and ills.
The big picture is our very small place in the great plan with the earth, is that the Earth is to be utterly filled with the Glory of God. We remember the revelation to Moses that the Glory is the Just and Merciful Character in the Law and Commands (Exodus 33). Surely most of the world about us is vastly astray from knowing God's justice and mercy, as they say sweet is bitter (Isa 5:20) and say that God loves the sinners that wilfully continue in what are now legal sins! It has been bitter to see how lawlessness as in the days of Lot and Noah has run rampant, due to both lack of God's laws and fools thinking kindness is no punishment for crimes. Do we wonder that God sends a plague? But I trusted that if I sought the protection of the Great Life-giver, I would be given life to see the great works done by Yahweh Elohim's hands among the nations, as His plan with the earth is worked out to the end.
Having been given life, I write in praise of that work I see. The plan to fill the earth with the glory of God begins with the call to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Israel), to make from the heritage of his obedience and faith a nation of all the people's of the earth, in a kingdom centred in the mountains of Israel. If the nations are astray as to morals, putting their laws instead of God' laws, they are more defiant when it comes to who rules. What leader in the world recognises the Mighty One of the Bible rules the kingdoms of the earth, and will rule the kingdoms of the earth openly soon from Jerusalem? Did any humbly ask that God take control and take away the plague bringing destruction? They were all as Pharaoh. They will lose the firstborn.
I looked up in hope, knowing our redemption draws near as I saw more than any year ever before, my Lord's words on Olivet fulfilled as to the conditions on earth at the time of his return. In the past there have been years of protest where people are 'as the sea and waves roaring' (Luke 21), notably since 1967 and the Woodstock Vietnam era, but the protests this last year have been larger and more persistent and violent leading to the destruction of entire neighbourhoods, and they are about diverse issues of perceived inequality (not real), climate control (not possible as God controls it) and freedom (illusory) that no leaders are able to solve.
Against a backdrop of the nations in distress with perplexity over how to control God's direction of the man-made plague and the sea and the waves roaring with discontent at any restrictions, we see also America with all foolishness and Britain with reluctance relinquish Afghanistan, having already lost Iraq and Turkey. As a result, this year we saw the end of American global power. If America was strong, would the weak be able to think they are strong as Joel 3 says they will? - therefore the end of time could not come when America was strong. On a watershed moment events played out as I expected from the Prophecy of Ezekiel 38, where America at best is a third in a weak voice of Arab-led protest against the Northern invader of Israel.
This year we see the outworking of God's plans as to Jerusalem as other sons of Shem, who had before been at enmity with Israel, the Arabs extend a hand of trade to Israel. This was more of a miracle political sea change than the fall of the Berlin wall I saw in 1989 when again we might expect Russia could unite with France and Germany. This years love-fest of Jews and Arabs was more than I had expected from the prophecy in Ezekiel 38 where I had understood all my life that the Sheba and Dedan were Arabia who was with Britain and India the Merchant of Tarshish. Whereas the Arabs had been allied with the British, and at times with the Americans and had been all my life, they had not been even on speaking terms with the Israelis. However now as at no time in history since the beginning the events align to fulfil a stage in the detail of the grand plan of the Kingdom of God – where the Arabs protest a northern invasion of Jerusalem which brings Christ as king of the Jews to Jerusalem to establish the kingdom where the laws and mercy of Yahweh Elohim fill the earth. Thus my thankfulness as a grateful infinitesimal observer of the things angels have desired to look into.
If this event was not enough, we see finally Russia has chained Europe in all but fact, though a failure of American diplomacy in caving to German demands that they allow Nordstream 2 to bypass Ukraine and Russia's own energy policy which has seen it this year deal to gain control the gas to Europe, even from Iran. We know that Yahweh Elohim knows where all the treasures of the earth are (Job 28:10). The wealth of the earth is unevenly distributed and some nations are blessed and others not in being able to access them and make use of the treasure there, as God determines bounds of habitation (Acts 17:2) I can see that God indeed is putting hooks in the jaw of the Northern power to bring them down to battle. Some may feel the wheel grind slowly but this year there is hardly a day when there is not some news that indicates the long hoped for patterns, not from my life but from generations before, are falling into place.
The trend of events in our lives towards the Kingdom of God and our hope to be part in God's plan may be hard to see in present trials, but at the large scale of the nations over longer time scales the picture is clearer, making these events the witness to us and an anchor to the soul. There has been much to watch this year that would encourage us that we might look up in hope that our redemption is very near at hand. I had thought 2020 was a year of calm and restraint before the storm of 2021, which turned out a slow growler of dark skies of the threat of war as lightning as words still building into 2022. I hear the leaders call for peace – but there is no peace to the wicked….
But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. (1Thess 5:1-6)
