By Fenter Northern
TWO THINGS I see this virus has done: It has wakened this nation from a lapse of complacency as well as having revealed the angelic segment in some souls.
Protracted periods of ease and comfortable living seen in our blessed nation for many years served to drift us away from God, and consequently from each other, ushering in a meltdown in personal and governmental ethics. Our nation had receded into an opioid land where values indispensable to true happiness were relegated to the dusty archives of the social mind.
Then, an awakening whistle blew: a harbinger of death suddenly descended upon the human race sobering it back into a reality lost along the way that there is more to life than the material.
If we were to survive as a nation, something had to bring us back from the fragile bubble of political correctness (shamefully, a few partyists persist) to being forced to our knees in a desperate realization that what we need is God in our lives. Worshipping the golden calf of humanistic materialism left our society helplessly vulnerable to an invisible enemy forcing the truly wise to realize that without God we are doomed.
Paul said “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, … but against unseen forces in high places.” If those apostles who fought so valiantly against the demons in their day were to return and see our demon possessed society today, I think they would see that the desperate struggle remains against a spiritually bankrupt society.
So, what are we to say in this God-defying world with its ominous threat to our freedoms, and its shameless mockery of justice?
One thing for sure. There must not be a temporary revival of vital values forced on us by this gruesome banshee we are facing; for who is that person that can say for certainty our present woes are not a clarion call for society to halt – to stop in its rushing tracks, and behold the sordid mess this world has gotten itself into by drifting from the Rock from which we were hewn.
And while we are speaking about this, we in Christ’s church should do a great deal of introspection. Who are we to advance the cause of the sinless Christ in this wicked world with the immaculate Lord looking down on His church drowsy with complacency?
This dreadful pandemic can have positive meaning if it thrusts upon us sufficient penance causing us to focus our minds on the frailty of life, and to cast our eyes upon the coming of Christ, which to this passing generation is very soon, if not in factual coming, in the short time we have left here.
Evil must be defied, or it wins. It must not be dallied with but looked straight in the face, saying, “Our God will deliver us, but if not, we will not bow to your idol image.” The Almighty reigns.
Satan offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world if He would but fall down and worship him; however, Jesus knew the wages of sin is death and refused to bow.
Because of His defiance, there is an innumerable count known only to God that still serve Him as King of kings and Lord of lords. The remnant survives.
Pilate told Jesus he had the power to crucify Him; however, Jesus hurled this into his grinning teeth, ‘You have no power except what God has given you.” And so, it is today!
No pain or suffering that man must endure is of God’s delight. He agonized and died in the flesh to give us hope. The forbidden new knowledge of sin’s curse came only after man divorced himself from God to live by his own wisdom.
“Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.”
What does a Christian have that is invincible to Satan? – just Faith! That provides the victory in the darkest hour when all else fails. The reason church attendance and Bible study are so critically important is this: it is therein where the vital fountain of faith is found bubbling in the word of God: for, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word f God.”
Children, come what may, let’s sing together: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” Deliverer us O Father, however, thy will be done – and help us strengthen our weak faith to do it.