By Stephen GreenFirst Published in Christian Voice September 2011
Amos 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?
Acres of newsprint, hours of speech and gigabytes of internet have been devoted to finding a cause for the riots inEnglandthat flared up at the end of August.
In natural terms, as David Cameron correctly observed, the lawlessness sprung from ‘a lack of responsibility, which comes from a lack of proper parenting, a lack of proper upbringing, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals.’
He was right, although it is a pity that he failed to acknowledge how the British Government itself has contributed to the very evils he identified. No-fault divorce-on-demand, introduced in theUKin the 1960′s, and amoral sex-education from the 1970′s are just two of a raft of measures made in hell which drove our nation into sin and sowed the social wind which would become a whirlwind in the future.
Liberal Elite Forced Evil Onto the Poor
All the legal disorder of the sixties and seventies undermined the basic morality and the familial foundation of our society. To make it worse, not one of the laws of the permissive society was demanded by the people. Every single one was a creature of the political class, the civil servants, politicians and opinion-formers of the liberal elite. Naturally, all the immorality and its consequences bore and still bears most heavily not on the wealthy men who forced it all through, but on the poorer sections of our society.
With an almost total absence of responsible men, let alone fathers, on many of our council estates, with children there knowing ‘their rights’ and the phone number of Social Services if any discipline if so much as mentioned, is it any wonder that those estates have been terrorised by gangs for years now, even before the riots and looting happened?
To be blunt, it would have been a miracle if the riots and looting had not happened, in natural terms. It was, to use the popular expression, ‘waiting to happen.’
Lest anyone think I am being too acerbic against our rulers (the political class, as I called them above) just look at what the Prophet Amos says about the wealthy women ofSamaria:
Amos 4:1 Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink. 2 The Lord GOD hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.
He calls them ‘cows’, which many might say is not too loving. Amos names these wealthy women as oppressors, and his heart is for the poor and needy upon whom the policies of their husbands were bearing heavily.
God Brings the Disaster
However, Amos does not see things in the naturalistic way in which a majority even of Christians might see them. At the start of Chapter Three he asks a series of nine rhetorical questions. Each of them requires the answer ‘No.’ Here are the first seven:
Amos 3:3 Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
4 Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing?
5 Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is for him? shall one take up a snare from the earth, and have taken nothing at all?
6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?
In a very Hebrew way, Amos starts with the uncontroversial and builds to a climax. It would be nitpicking to say that on occasions the hunter might catch nothing in his snare; a practised trapper would certainly expect to find something there. In the same way, the expectation is that the people will be afraid if they hear the warning trumpet. Lastly, if disaster or calamity befall a city, says Amos, it did not just happen by chance; the Lord did it.
The context may be argued to mitigate the conclusion. Amos has systematically laid out the sins ofSyria,Gaza,Tyre,Edom,Ammon,Moab, Judah and, lastly,Israel, his principal focus and burden. For their mounting transgressions God ‘will not turn away’. It may be possible to say that some disasters are specifically the doing of the Lord, in particular, those against nations whom the prophet has specifically identified. Others, it could be said, come out of nowhere, or that there is a naturalistic explanation for them, which was the proposition with which we opened. The reader must judge the sense of Amos 3:6 in its context.
Even in its context, Amos would tell us that deeds of violence and destruction at least against the nations he identified came from the same loving heavenly father who removes our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12) and who desires not the death of a sinner but rather his repentance (Ezek 33:11). Calamity is coming from the very God who became one of us in the Lord Jesus Christ and endured the horror of the Cross to save mankind, or as many as would put their faith in him, from the consequences of their sins.
Righteous Perish with the Wicked
It is a hard thought to take in, especially as there must have been, among nearly 3,000 souls who perished in the Twin Towers ten years ago last month, a good number who feared the Lord. The same would be true inNairobi, in August 1998, where 247 people died and 5,500 were injured in a bomb attack on the United States Embassy. One year ago, in June 2010, around Whitehaven inCumbria, a gunman killed twelve. Did God visit these atrocities upon those cities? On Boxing Day 2004, almost a quarter of a million lives were lost in the Asian Tsunami. The one inJapanearlier this year was believed to account for over a thousand lives. The insurers might call these ‘Acts of God’ but are we seriously willing to blame God for these inundations?
In London, on 7th July 2005, there was a smaller-scale terrorist assault than that in New York which still killed 48 innocent bystanders as well as the four bombers and left 700 injured. Is that the Lord at work as well? Two weeks later, a similar attack failed when the bombers made a mess of it. Many Christians, including me, gave thanks to God for protecting the city. But, in all honesty, should we give God the credit for savingLondonfrom death this second time but not recognise that he allowed the first offence to proceed to its deadly end?
After all, the Psalmist said: ‘Except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain‘ (Ps 127:1). The implication is that the Lord may have ill intentions against that city. Job asked his wife: ‘What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ (Job2:10)
God Destroys Nations and Kingdoms
Jeremiah was given a mission to his countrymen:
Jer 18:11 Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.
The prophet is as certain as Amos that in this instance at least God himself is the one sending the disaster, or the ‘evil,’ as the KJV translators put it. (The same Hebrew word is used as in Amos 3:6: ra’ah, meaning moral evil or an affliction or calamity.) That verse comes after God’s declaration in the famous potter’s house of his ability and intention to reward nations for their obedience and for their rebellion from his righteous laws:
Jer 18:7 At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it;
8 If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.
9 And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it;
10 If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.
The Lord Jesus himself pronounced judgment against the towns of Corazin,BethsaidaandCapernaum(Luke10:13-15). A while later, when asked about the Galilaeans slaughtered by Pilate, the Lord Jesus did little to gainsay the understanding that such disasters are warnings or judgments from God:
Luke 13:1 There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
2 And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things?
3 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
4 Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?
5 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
The Lord appears to be saying that there was sin inGalileeandJerusalemwhich did indeed deserve judgment, even though the unfortunate individuals on the receiving end of these particular terrible events were not necessarily those responsible for the judgment.
How Long Shall the Wicked Triumph?
And then Jesus immediately uses these two incidents to issue a warning to his hearers to repent, on pain of perishing in the same way. Indeed, when the Romans sackedJerusalemin AD70, the destruction was total and the loss of life immense. Even thoughJerusalemandJudahdeserved the demolition that was to come, the Lord still cried out in anguish over what was to come:
Luke 13:34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!
God is full of lovingkindness and compassion, but that must also involve judgment on the wicked, either in this world or the one to come, and as nations cannot be called to account in the next world, they must be dealt with in this. It is not loving to let sin abound, even if grace abounds much more (Rom 6:1). No father stands by while his children trash the backyard. No Almighty God can let injustice and evil flourish for ever. The Psalmist cried out, ‘How long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?‘ (Psalm 94:3).
There is also a sense of collective responsibility. We are all responsible for the sins of our nation. Folk may be born again, but if they do not sound the trumpet of warning, Ezekiel says God will require the blood of the wicked at their hands (Ezek3:18-21, 33:2-7) . The righteous always have a prophetic duty to lift up their voices like a trumpet and warn about the sin in the land (Isa 58:1). The understanding that the Lord can either protect a city or a nation or bring judgment against it places upon us a huge responsibility as ‘strangers and pilgrims’ in the land:
Jer 29:7 And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.
The text presents prayer and seeking peace as two separate activities, so the Lord requires more of us than just praying for peace. If we truly wish to see peace in our nation, then we must seek the Lord as to what would make peace with him and then witness that prophetic word (prophetic in the sense of forthtelling the word of God) to our leaders. As God has clearly set out what he expects of nations in his word, it is not difficult for mature Christians to seek the Lord in the Bible and proclaim that word ‘in the great congregation’ (Psalm 40:9).
It Could Get A Lot Worse Yet
I often hear Christians suggest that our national situation and/or that of the world in general is so bad that the Lord Jesus is set to return any day soon. If we accept the pre-millennial eschatology behind the suggestion for the sake of argument, one trouble with the view expressed is that Christian campaigners were saying exactly the same in the nineteen-seventies. They thought it was bad enough then. Another possible problem is that if the source of the evil for which God would bring judgment originated in the nineteen-sixties, then seventy years from then, rather than fifty, may be the time of judgment. Either way, it could get a lot worse yet if there is no change in policy in our nation.
The proportion of Scots in favour of gay marriage has risen from 41% to 61% in just nine years, from 2002 to 2010. How long will it take until we are likeSodom, where righteousness was turned completely on its head? I am more concerned for our future now than at any previous time. I really believe that unless Christians stand up quickly a time is coming when no man can work (John 9:4) and very few of us will be saved out of the trial to come. Ezekiel was moved to suggest that only the three most righteous men he could think of would be saved when the Lord stretched out his hand against the land:
Ezek 14:20 Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness.
The ministry of Christian Voice may be summed up in these words: ‘Working for Godly government; praying for national repentance.’ If Amos, Jeremiah and the Lord Jesus spoke words which are applicable today, then unless our nation repents, we can expect more and worse disasters in the years to come. The people of the Lord, Ezekiel’s watchmen, have an awesome duty to perform in any age. The prophet Amos says:
Amos 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.
The word of God is clear. Even without a specific prophetic warning, the secrets of the Lord have been revealed in Holy Scripture. We know what God requires of us. We need to have our own lives in order and we must be active in building the Kingdom and in speaking out against evil. The final two questions posed by Amos are these:
Amos 3:8 The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord GOD hath spoken, who can but prophesy?
Dear friends, I am sorry this is such a solemn article, but I have to speak it as I see it. The very survival of our nation could depend on whether Christian men and women like us rise to the challenge before us. The Lord Jesus calls us do a very simple thing in proclaiming his word. If we do this simple thing, we can depend on our mighty God to do the clever stuff, indeed to do the miraculous. It is not over yet! Can we rise to the challenge?
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