The Long-Haul Perspective; How the past informs the present. Do you feel frustrated with the way our country is going? Lots of people have said they’re just disgusted with this election cycle. We Christians are saddened to see our country seem to race farther and farther away from God and from everything we think is right. Ever wonder why God doesn’t seem to answer our prayers for this country, why He takes so long, why it seems like nothing is happening? I sure do too, and I’m pretty sure most of us wonder about such things. Please watch this video or just read the notes. I hope it'll encourage you...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4r9ZEkYTWM
Riding my bike the other day, I began to think about history. Doing that brought some comfort to me in my frustration, so I thought I’d share my thoughts with you. I started off thinking about how, depending on your view, the universe and the earth took either thousands or billions of years to form. (I’m reading a book about it by a Christian astrophysicist, Dr. Hugh Ross) It took many, many years for life to appear, then thousands or millions more to develop into higher forms. Human beings arose either on the African continent or the area of Mesopotamia, depending on who you listen to.
Think of how life must have been those many thousands of years ago. It was so limited! The people who lived in ancient Sumeria, the area where Abraham came from, they had no idea what was beyond the next mountain, what was on the other side of even the Persian Gulf or the Euphrates River. Travel was so slow. Human development went at a snail’s pace. A couple of thousand years could go by, and hardly anything would change. People still used bows and arrows, spears, swords. They still lived by farming or hunting. There were only a few who could read, communication was slow and so sporadic. We modern people would’ve hated it!
God had a plan to change the world, to save mankind, to open his understanding, to bring him out of his darkness, but it took millennia to carry out that plan. He called Abraham more than 4,000 years ago, and began putting His plan into motion. At last! Things are going to change, to improve! Ah, but Abraham had to wait and wait and wait for the fulfillment of the promises God had given him. He had to wait until he was 100 years old to get his promised son, Isaac. What a slow beginning! And nothing spectacular happened with Isaac, that’s for sure. Then came Jacob and his 12 sons. Years and years went by, and still no sign of God’s great plan.
Then there was a famine, and Jacob’s sons had to leave the Promised Land and go down into Egypt! When are these promises ever going to be fulfilled, and how can they be, if these people aren’t even in the land? Four hundred plus years of slavery, and finally, God sets them free with the most spectacular demonstration of power the world has seen since creation. They start on their way. Now we’re going to see some changes, right? Ah, but they disobey God, and have to wander forty years and die off in the wilderness. It’s such a failure, such a disappointment! Man, when is God ever going to get something going?
They finally take possession of the land under Joshua. Wonderful! But in just a few years, they forget all about God’s covenant with them, His promises, His ways. They get all sidetracked. They’re conquered and beaten down by hostile enemies time after time. They live in a continual up and down cycle of sin and failure, a few bright spots, but then it’s back down into the pits again. This goes on year after year!
God raises up a prophet, Samuel. He anoints Israel’s first king. Great! Now they finally have a leader and start to win some victories. But that leader is disobedient, self-centered, paranoid. He even consults a medium, and ends up a miserable failure who falls on his own sword after being wounded in battle. Israel loses and suffers shame and humiliation once again. Then David comes on the scene, and he’s a man who shows real promise. He wins some great victories and begins to build the nation up again. Then he ends up failing spectacularly, committing adultery, murdering a man to escape the negative consequences. His family is a disaster. One son rapes his half-sister. His brother kills him, then leads a rebellion that tears the whole nation apart.
Another son becomes king, and he’s the wisest man who ever lived. Man, everything’s finally looking up! But no, the guy’s “wisdom” makes him think he can ignore God, so he ends up abusing his people. When his son takes over, there is a revolt and a civil war. Everything is set back forever. Israel’s never unified again. Their power, prosperity, and influence in the world are all diminished. They never achieve their full potential, and end up being totally destroyed and going into captivity for years and years.
Such a disappointment! A whole lot more failure than victory for sure, and these are God’s chosen people! After years of exile, some of them get to come home, but they’re few and weak, and in no time, even those few blow it again and break God’s covenant, so they’re on the verge of extinction. They certainly never return to their former power or prestige. They’re under the dominion of first one and then another regional power, and are finally dominated by the Roman Empire. Where are all the promises of God? Where’s the salvation He promised to bring to the world through Israel? They’ve been a miserable failure, and God, where is He, anyway? Seems like He’s abandoned them!
No, it was precisely at that dark time that He came to visit them, disguised in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, a poor, itinerant rabbi. Veiled that way, most of them don’t even recognize Him! Their ideas of God are so confused by this time, they can’t even see the truth when He’s standing right in their midst, doing miracles the likes of which have never been seen before. Only a relative few believe and follow. After Jesus is crucified and raised again, the Church is born, the Holy Spirit is poured out. Miracles continue, the Word of the Kingdom spreads far and wide. It’s wonderful!
But heresies and false teachers abound too. Confusion and debate ramp up. The Church becomes ossified, religious. Church offices are sold for the money and prestige they bring. The light begins to grow dim. Some try to reform the Church, but are persecuted by fellow believers! In the end, there’s a huge split around 1054 AD, and the Church is divided between the Orthodox in the east and the Roman Catholics in the West. So-called Christian leaders launch the Crusades and begin slaughtering Muslims and even Byzantine Christians.
Oh, this is just wonderful! So like Jesus! I’m sure He was just thrilled with all the murder and bloodshed, the conquests “in His name,” and the devastation. How could His Church get things so wrong?!
In 1517 there’s another huge split, and the Protestant Reformation begins. A lot of good comes from it, but the world mostly just sees division and fighting. In fact, there are even religious wars! When will God step in and fix things?!
When America was discovered, there was hope for something better. A new nation was founded on Christian principles, something never seen since the founding of Israel! So many natural resources, so much promise! The greatest government with the greatest freedom and order the world had ever seen! Ah, but European culture just can’t work with the indigenous cultures. Atrocities are committed, thousands wiped out. The horrors of slavery spread in the South, and eventually, a monstrous Civil War with over 600,000 casualties. The country started so well, with so much hope, but even in its early years, there was sadness and sin and much that was wrong.
Today we’re as divided we’ve ever been. Another Civil War’s going on, we just haven’t started fighting with physical weapons yet. But we still take sides and bitterly hate each other, hate what the other side even stands for. We look at the same world in totally different ways, and it seems we’ll never be reconciled. Our problems are huge – debt beyond anything known in history, hostile enemies within and without, disagreement about the way forward.
Must our beautiful country crash and burn? Must it be weakened and diminished? It’s so frustrating in view of our history and our great potential! Yet we cannot seem to change things or reconcile our differences. We don’t even agree on what the problems are!
I’ve been truly frustrated and amazed as I’ve watched this presidential race. I can’t believe the candidates we’ve been left with. Last night on the news, a reporter said whoever wins will be the most unpopular “winner” in history! Such a large percentage of people dislike or distrust either or both. Yet, I thought to myself, how did these people become the candidates? Wasn’t it because the majority voted for them? Aren’t they then the candidates we asked for, the candidates we deserve? What does that say about us, the public?
We’re really in trouble folks! We’re really messed up! Our country has declined morally, spiritually, militarily, economically, socially, and in our standing before the world. We were a shining city on a hill, but it seems that hill is sinking into a swamp and that shining light is growing dimmer every day. It seems so sad! Why is God letting it happen? I get so distraught over it at times, so troubled and perplexed.
But as I thought back over all this history, I saw things more clearly. What we’re seeing in our day is no different from what’s been going on for millennia. God pronounced a curse upon this earth and upon mankind in the Garden of Eden. Our ancestors made the wrong choice back then, and we’ve been making wrong choices ever since! This world is the way it is because it is fallen. Human beings choose to reject God, and He has allowed us to reap what we sow. He won’t stop the consequences of free will!
Yet in the midst of it all, He remains in control. He allows the negatives and is as grieved (or more so) by them as we. But it’s because of all that’s wrong in the world that some begin to look for answers and find God. Would you or I have ever sought God if not for the problems in our lives, the questions we struggled with? God does much more than just allow what’s wrong with the world – He uses it! He teaches us and disciplines us through it all – He even disciplines the nations! (Ps. 94:10) Though we often won’t understand it till eternity, even the worst of circumstances will end up bringing glory to God someday!
God has always accomplished just what He promised, even in spite of man’s rebellion. He sent His Son, “in the fullness of time,” (Gal. 4:4) and He’s been with us in this suffering and darkness. He will send Him again, very soon (in the scheme of things), to make right everything that is wrong.
Yes, it’s a messed up world, and yes, it sure seems, from our perspective, to go on and on interminably. Yes, there are many disappointments. We wonder why God allows things to go so wrong for so long. But the Bible teaches us plainly why it must be this way! If we look at scripture and we look at history, it helps us get a different perspective, doesn’t it? In this fallen world, we have to expect these kinds of things. But with God’s perspective and the patience and encouragement we can get from His Spirit and His Word, we can have hope, and we can keep our chins up. I want to conclude by reading some scriptures to you.
Rom 15:4 – For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. NIV
Ro. 8:18-25 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. NIV
Rev. 11:15 – "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever." NIV
So keep on praying for the best, but don’t give up or get discouraged if things don’t go as you’d hoped. God knows what He’s doing, He’s at work, even when all looks dark, and He has a glorious future in store for those who trust in Him.