CHOICES THAT CHANGE HISTORY
TWENTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD BLOGGER Claire Eastham is beautiful, funny, and intelligent. She had a happy childhood, enjoys a fulfilling relationship with her boyfriend, and works at what she describes as her “dream job” at a well-known book publishing house. Yet, not long ago, the panic attacks Claire has suffered since she was a teenager started to dominate her life. These attacks became so intense that she had to take a monthlong leave of absence from work. She says, “Panic attacks are the worst. You feel like you’re going mad, like you’re going to die; worrying about everything, feeling out of control, wondering what you sound like and what you look like. The voice in your head, it’s constant. You can’t stop it. It’s exhausting.”1
In May 2016, the Guardian (UK), one of the world’s most respected newspapers, published a story about the growing sense of fear, restlessness, and anxiety around the world. The newspaper reported:
We live with an epidemic of anxiety. In 1980, 4 percent of Americans suffered a mental disorder associated with anxiety. Today half do.… Anxiety, depression, self-harm, attention deficit disorder and profound eating problems afflict our young as never before.
Anxiety has always been part of the human condition—as has depression and tendencies to self-harm—but never, it seems, on this scale. A number of trends appear to be colliding.… The bonds of society, faith and community—tried and tested mechanisms to support wellbeing—are fraying. Teenagers … are beset by a myriad of agonizing choices about how to achieve the good life with fewer social and psychological anchors to help them navigate their way. Who can blame them if they respond with an ever rising sense of anxiety, if not panic?2
What is the cause of this growing global state of anxiety and fear? The Guardian attributes this disturbing trend to a “fraying” or breakdown of “the bonds of society, faith and community.” In other words, the defection of the church from its foundation of faith, with a resulting collapse of the family, social norms, and the cohesion of community, has left people feeling vulnerable, fearful, and depressed. By defecting from God’s Word, we in the church have let society down.
The Israelites, in the time of their defection before they were conquered by the Babylonians, experienced the same sense of fear and vulnerability that people in Western civilization feel today. Government became impotent. The laws were flouted and ignored. Violence and strife were rampant throughout society. Evil went unpunished.
The prophet Habakkuk expressed the mood of his times when he poured out his complaint to God:
How long, LORD, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted. (Habakkuk 1:2–4)
Though little is known about the prophet Habakkuk, Bible scholars believe he lived in Jerusalem at about the same time as the prophets Jeremiah and Zephaniah. After the people of Israel had spent two centuries in disobedience and rebellion, Habakkuk delivered a series of prophecies from God concerning the Babylonian Empire. Through him, God said:
I am raising up the Babylonians,
that ruthless and impetuous people,
who sweep across the whole earth
to seize dwellings not their own.
They are a feared and dreaded people;
they are a law to themselves
and promote their own honor. (Habakkuk 1:6–7)
There are always consequences when God’s people cease to honor God and obey His Word. When the Israelites turned their backs on God, He removed His hand of protection from them. They became victims of the terrorists of their day, the Babylonians. Read Habakkuk’s description of the Babylonians—“ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth … a feared and dreaded people … a law to themselves.” Isn’t that an apt description of terror groups such as ISIS?
If we, as God’s people, distort God’s truth in order to line our pockets or to become friends with the world, don’t we risk the same consequences Habakkuk warned about here?
TERROR FROM WITHOUT, SOCIAL DECAY FROM WITHIN
Exile is the destiny of every society or community that once knew God, then turned its back on Him. That exile might take any of a number of forms, but it almost always includes terror from without and social decay from within. Examples of that social decay include the following:
1. Eroding respect for truth and wisdom. Our Western universities are no longer institutions of higher learning but brainwashing factories. Students are not trained to be wise and learned but are simply indoctrinated into the party line. Graduates have very little knowledge of the classics, the humanities, economics, or history. They cannot find the nations of the world on a map. They know just enough to be easily manipulated by secularist propaganda.
2. Declining respect for integrity in our leaders. Americans used to demand character and virtue from their leaders. From Watergate to the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the still-unexplained massacre at Benghazi, it’s clear that Americans have not always gotten the honest government they voted for—but at least the voters used to care about the integrity of our country’s leaders. Not anymore! Today, American voters elect the demagogue who promises the most freebies, not the leader with proven character.
3. Increasing corruption in government. Our leaders no longer answer to We the People but to a wealthy clique of oligarchs. Legislators write laws that benefit the powerful few so that billion-dollar corporations reap government subsidies while the middle class is crushed by oppressive taxation. The welfare state subsidizes indolence and irresponsible parenting while punishing hard work and achievement.
4. An upsurge of violence and race hatred. Our media and politicians stir up racial hatred and division for the sake of ratings and political advantage. We are emptying our prisons and turning predators loose, placing innocent citizens—especially our minority populations—at ever-increasing risk.
5. The coarsening of the culture. Vulgarity and obscenity are rampant, not merely in the darkest corners of the Internet but throughout our entire society. The debasement of our Western civilization is another sign of our Babylonian Exile.
6. Economic instability and institutionalized greed. Our politicians do nothing to solve the national debt. Left unchecked, the debt will reach critical mass and collapse the world economy. The chaos that will erupt when the crash occurs will be like nothing the world has ever seen before. The coming crash is 100 percent preventable, but it continues to worsen because of insatiable human greed.
All of these internal threats, combined with the external threat of terrorism, are signs of our Babylonian Exile. These problems can be solved—and you and I are the solution. If we would return to the truth of God’s Word, if we would become the light of the world as the Lord called us to be (Matthew 5:14–16), then the light of God’s truth, shining through us, would push back the darkness.
The apostle Paul tells us that God has called us to be “blameless and pure,” living as “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” If we would live blameless lives, exemplifying the purity and simplicity of the gospel, then we would “shine among them like stars in the sky” (Philippians 2:15). Wouldn’t you like to shine like a star in the firmament of this dark and dying world? Wouldn’t you like to shed the light of Jesus Christ on the hopeless people around you?
If we would answer that call and take up that challenge, then we would see more and more people come to know Christ—and God would heal our land (2 Chronicles 7:14). Our exile into terrorism would come to an end.
PEACE IN AN ANXIOUS WORLD
Restlessness, worry, and anxiety continue to grow around the world, and I believe this is a preparation for the coming of the Antichrist. We don’t know God’s timetable for the Last Days. We don’t know if the events of the book of Revelation will be set in motion today or ten thousand years from now. Jesus doesn’t want us to speculate on the day or the hour of His return (Matthew 24:36; 25:13). He simply wants us to be ready at all times.
Yet I can’t help feeling that the Last Days are fast approaching. Our restlessness and anxiety began when humanity was evicted from the first City of God, the Garden of Eden. But the fear that seized human hearts after the fall of mankind seems to be growing exponentially, spiraling out of control.
If there is one feature that separates the citizens of the City of God from dwellers of the City of Man, it is anxiety. Those who belong to the City of God have nothing to fear. Those who belong to the City of Man have everything to fear. This doesn’t mean that God’s people never experience anxiety or fear. We all do from time to time. But we who live in the City of God have a Source of hope, peace, and confidence that those in the City of Man don’t have. As the apostle Paul assured us, “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).
That’s why Jesus repeatedly told His followers, “Do not worry”:
Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? (Matthew 6:25–26)
Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. (Matthew 6:34)
Do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. (Matthew 10:19–20)
Fear, worry, and anxiety overshadow the City of Man. But there should be no shadow of fear in the City of God.
In the midst of the gathering darkness and deepening depression of this world, is it possible to live without fear, worry, and anxiety? Yes! Absolutely! Those of us who belong to the City of God, who have placed our trust in the Lord Jesus, exemplify the peace of God in the midst of an anxious world.
TWO HUMANITIES
We can trace the contrast between the City of Man and the City of God throughout the Bible. These two cities came from two distinct origins, followed two different paths through history, display two distinct sets of characteristics, and are bound for two completely opposite destinations. The earthly city, the City of Man, is symbolized in Scripture as Egypt, as Babylon, as Rome. Our civilization, Western civilization, is the City of Man today.
By contrast, the heavenly city, the City of God, is a symbol of all the elect of God from every nation, every tribe, every generation. All the redeemed followers of the Lord, from Old Testament times and New Testament times, will one day dwell in the New Jerusalem—the true City of God. When the City of God arrives, the City of Man will be destroyed. But the City of God will go on forever and ever.
These two cities represent two distinct humanities—two distinct offspring, or lineages. One is the lineage of Satan; the other is the lineage of Eve.
We first see this distinction in Genesis 3:15, immediately after the fall of Adam and Eve. There we find the first announcement of the gospel. There, in the Garden of Eden, God tells the serpent, Satan, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Now, in a biological and genetic sense, all of Eve’s offspring are a single lineage—the human race. But God is not speaking in a biological sense. He is speaking of spiritual reality. The offspring of Satan consists of all fallen, unregenerate human beings—those who have rejected God and have rejected His Son as their Lord and Savior. The offspring of Eve—her ultimate descendant—is the Lord Jesus Christ.
God’s prophecy, spoken to Satan in the Garden of Eden, was fulfilled on the cross of Calvary. There Satan struck at the heel of Jesus, the offspring of Eve. His head was pierced by a crown of thorns, the bones of His hands and feet were dislocated by massive iron nails, and His side was gashed by a Roman spear. Yet compared to what Jesus accomplished on the cross—crushing the head of Satan—all of the Lord’s sufferings were like a snakebite on the heel.
Jesus suffered, died, and rose again—but Satan will never recover from the skull-crushing blow he received on that day.
We see another description of the enmity between the offspring of Satan and the offspring of Eve in the book of Revelation:
A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days. (Revelation 12:1–6)
Here again, we see the woman and her offspring contrasted with Satan—“the dragon”—who seeks to devour the woman’s offspring. We even see the dragon in his act of rebellion against God, leading a third of the angels of heaven against God, resulting in Satan being exiled from God’s presence.
Sin created the enmity between the offspring of Satan and the offspring of Eve. Sin created the distinction between the City of Man and the City of God. Disobedience to God always brings division.
When the serpent—Satan—tempted Adam and Eve, he had two goals in mind. First, Satan wanted to stop Adam and Eve from worshipping God. Second, Satan wanted to seduce Adam and Eve into worshipping him. Satan succeeded in his first objective, but not in the second. He succeeded in destroying the fellowship Adam and Eve enjoyed with God, but he did not seduce them into worshipping him.
Why did Satan fail in his second objective? He might have succeeded except for one obstacle in Satan’s way: the gospel of Jesus Christ. When God announced the gospel in Genesis 3:15, when he pronounced Satan’s ultimate doom, he also announced to Adam and Eve that a Savior was coming. He announced a solution to the problem of sin.
Adam and Eve were the first human beings to be created, the first to sin—and the first to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. They heard the gospel, and they believed. That is why Satan could not seduce them into worshipping him.
Why did Satan want Adam and Eve to worship him? Was it because Satan thought so highly of these human creatures God had created? Was he so impressed with us that he craved fellowship with us? Absolutely not. Satan hated Adam and Eve from the moment they were created. Satan’s heart burned with jealousy toward God’s newest creation, the human race.
Why was Satan jealous? He was jealous because he had once been the most beautiful and splendid creature of God’s creation. The book of Ezekiel gives us God’s description of Satan before his rebellion and fall. There, God reminds Satan:
You were the seal of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden,
the garden of God;
every precious stone adorned you.…
Your settings and mountings were made of gold;
on the day you were created they were prepared.
You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you. (Ezekiel 28:12–15)
Satan was created as a creature of dazzling beauty, knowledge, and wisdom. But the sin of pride entered Satan’s heart, and he rebelled against God. As a result, Satan was cast out of heaven. When Satan saw God create human beings in God’s own image and place them in the Garden of Eden, he was filled with rage and envy. God showered these creatures with love and placed them in a beautiful garden and graced them with His fellowship. Satan had lost all of this—his beauty, his special relationship with God, and his place in paradise. Satan was determined to make sure that the human creatures could not have what he himself had lost.
So he pretended to be Eve’s friend, even as he was tempting her to destruction. Satan thought he could lure Adam and Eve away from obeying and worshipping God (and he was right). But he also thought he could switch their allegiance and persuade them to worship him instead.
Satan didn’t understand the power of the gospel to alter our attitude toward sin and draw us into worship of the one true God. The Bible says that when the gospel transforms a person’s heart, “the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Lord Jesus Christ alone has the power to rescue us from Satan’s darkness and bring us into His kingdom of light—“the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13–14).
We are no longer citizens of the fallen and dying City of Man. The gospel has granted us eternal citizenship in the City of God.