The Forsaken God: Woe of the Prophet
This is the preface to the book The Forsaken God: Woe of the Prophet.
Recently I travelled to London, a city that has so much to explore that a week is too short to see everything that you want. Britain also had lost their most impressive and beloved queen a couple of days before I arrived, so I could not visit Westminster Abbey, I therefore have cause to come back. But I visited many other churches, both Anglican and Catholic, and they were all very beautiful and magnificent, and it appeared to me that all of these churches once were built to the glory of God, every detail in the church in a way was there to the glory of God. But at the same time, I was visiting the Metropolitan Tabernacle, the spiritual home of Spurgeon and it was also a beautiful church but something completely different, the church itself would never compete with the living God about whose glory the people were there to worship. I was at two services at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, they worshiped in a way I never before had experienced. I like these particular Baptists, we have very few of them in Sweden.
So much has instead changed, both in the society and in contemporary Christianity. When reading outside some of the churches it said that their message was an open-minded Christian message, it was clear that the message would not offend anybody. The big thing today is to not offend anyone or to not be offended, we are to accept everything in the name of tolerance. If you are offended, you are very soon to be called a Pharisee and your way to be canceled is moments away. Today they cancel everyone that has thoughts or ideas that are deemed not to be in accordance with today’s norms and values. The tolerant are intolerant against the intolerant, and they do not see it or do not care that they themselves are intolerant. Because you can be intolerant against the so-called intolerant in the name of tolerance. What has happened to the world?
So, there is a clear division in the society, it has been very clear in USA, and in Sweden it has been clear in the recent election in September 2022, the only consensus that exist in political Sweden is about abortions. They all love our abortions; they love the killing of babies so much that they all want to make it into our constitution. The politicians cannot agree on the simplest thing, but about killing babies they all run together, even our Christian Democrats (KD); there was only one party in Sweden, Kristna Värdepartiet (Christian Value Party), that value the unborn, they got 0.09% of the votes in the election 2022.[1] Not even the Christians in Sweden vote for them.[2] The consensus in Swedish Christianity is that you cannot call yourself a Christian and vote for the Sweden Democrats (SD, a right wing party), but you can vote for every other party that loves to kill babies. I have a hard time with that; what we see is madness. This turned upside-down world leads us to another world of the same sort, the world and time of Jeremiah the prophet. He lived in strange times, he saw many kings, he lived through one of the most turmoil times Israel ever had experienced, when God destroyed the land of Israel through God’s servant Nebuchadnezzar, the Chaldean king. Many years before God had destroyed Israel, Ephraim, the kingdom in the north through the Assyrians. Isaiah was one of the prophets that clearly stated:
O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, And the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, And against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, To take the spoil, and to take the prey, And to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not so, Neither doth his heart think so; But it is in his heart to destroy And cut off nations not a few. For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings? Is not Calno as Carchemish? Is not Hamath as Arpad? Is not Samaria as Damascus? As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, And whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria; Shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, So do to Jerusalem and her idols? Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work Upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, And the glory of his high looks. For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, And by my wisdom; for I am prudent: And I have removed the bounds of the people, And have robbed their treasures, And I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man: And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: And as one gathereth eggs that are left, Have I gathered all the earth; And there was none that moved the wing, Or opened the mouth, or peeped. Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? Or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? As if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, Or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood (Isa. 10:5-15).
The LORD is using Assyria as a rod of his anger, as a staff in his indignation. It is the LORD that is sending Assyria; the king of Assyria on the other hand does not understand that he is used by the LORD, he thinks that he himself is destroying Israel, but the LORD will in his time punish the stout heart of the king, and the glory of his high looks. And the LORD asks if the axe shall boast itself, or the saw magnify itself, or the rod shake itself, or the staff lift up itself? No, everything that comes to pass comes from the LORD, we are so quick to forget that, or to deny that. But the LORD is sovereign, he has told us again and again, that he is the LORD. So, Isaiah had to prophesy about the destruction of the northern kingdom, and Jeremiah of the southern. We will use the book of Jeremiah and apply it to our own world. Many of the prophets had to prophecy about doom, Isaiah and Ezekiel were two prophets that also had to prophecy doom, but prophecy is not only about doom, it is also about hope, it about the sovereign God and his decree, his providence, his promises; Isaiha lived before Israel fell, Ezekiel had to live in captivity in Babylon, like Daniel, Jeremiah lived in Judah, all of them experienced the same thing, the punishment of God of a land and a people that had forsaken their God, the only God.
God is the same today as he was then, if he punished Israel and Judah for their sins, and Assyria and Babylon for their sins, why would he let us get away with our sins? There is no excuse for us. God will with certainty punish us and our sins. This is the theme in my coming book: The Forsaken God: Woe of the Prophet.
Jeremiah had to, for forty years, give a message from the LORD that he would punish the land because of its sins, because they had forsaken him. Everyone was partaker of the sins of Judah and Jerusalem, the king, the servants, the people, and the everyone mocked Jeremiah and said that they had heard him for forty years, and no one from the north came to take the land, to take them captive, they would not see famine, pestilence, or the sword. But Nebuchadnezzar came, and the people were taken captive in Babylon for seventy years, others died by the sword, by famine, by pestilence. We are in the same situation. The Christians are mocked by the world because Jesus has not come yet, Christians are mocked by other Christians that they are not progressive enough, that they deem them belonging to the Middle Ages, backward going fools, not worthy of any attention. God will not judge this world because they all belong to the kingdom, God will be all in all and restore everything, every other reading of the Bible is false, meaningless, abject.
I believe that God will punish this world that have turned its back against him, pushed him aside, thrown him behind our backs. If God punished them, he will punish us. We can be sure of that. They are given as an example for us, and you can be sure that will be repeated on us. Let us all repent and return to the LORD for forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
[1] 5983 votes.