vengeance

Grabbing headlines with crime and cruelty

eejoseph, , , ,

Do not believe for a second that the world will ever see a credible accounting of who was killed in its war to annihilate a terrorist organization.  War is one thing the United Nations defines with precision and crimes against humanity have gone unpunished since 1948.  Jebusites, marked for extermination in the campaign to take possession of Canaan, lived to see the beating heart of the immigrant community rise with their commercial and reverent contribution.

Marked for death and dispossession

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you, (Deuteronomy 7:1, NASB)

Survivors of divine decrees

Now as for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the sons of Judah could not drive them out; so the Jebusites live with the sons of Judah at Jerusalem until this day. (Joshua 15:63, NASB)

Prophet and king who know the truth

So Gad came to David that day and said to him, “Go up, erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” (2 Samuel 24:18, NASB)

The truth ignored with a racist policy

Now when these things had been completed, the princes approached me, saying, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, according to their abominations, those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians and the Amorites. (Ezra 9:1, NASB)

Exemplary cities in the reliable accounts

Now King Solomon sent and brought Hiram from Tyre. (1 Kings 7:13, NASB), then a wave of unprecedented immigration takes place.  (Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress timber and gold according to all his desire), then King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee. (1 Kings 9:11, NASB)

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 22. “Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. (Matthew 11:21-22, NASB)

Contrasts in neighbourly affairs

Compare the policies in the drive International relationships today with those of 2,000 years ago, and see that decency and high marble standards are no longer the priority of the inhabitants of the land flowing with milk and honey.

17. Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place; and there was a large crowd of His disciples, and a great throng of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon, 18. who had come to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were being cured. 19. And all the people were trying to touch Him, for power was coming from Him and healing them all. (Luke 6:17-19, NASB)

Bombs and air strikes may impress vengeful people but they solve no problem and undoubtedly corrupt good practice.  Violent crime  and mass murder self defence were never solutions to the human problem of greed, selfishness and idolatry.  So, what else is news?   Human propensity for violence has been growing steadily since the age of Abraham.  Divine judgment is not slack, neither is divine grace for those who respond to supreme generosity

God’s anger is not an emotional wilderness

eejoseph, , ,

Many people rant and rave about sin and crime and few if any have ready solutions for the predicaments of their neighbours.  To the Christian, if you are not a Christian, poor you .  Religious governments can chop off limbs to prevent violations of person and property.  There is no doubt in my mind that the delusion of a great American Revolution 2.0 is emotional lunacy, lacking love and justice of the type assumed to be central to most spiritual communities.  While God’s hot face has brought about the speedy demise of select individuals it is obvious that zapping erring individuals cannot be God’s ultimate treatment. 

God PUBLICLY DISPLAYED Christ as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was for the  DEMONSTRATION of His righteousness, because in God’s forbearance He passed over the sins people had previously committed;

(Romans 3:25, from the NASB)

So instead of a clean of the perps, as secular and religious authorities customarily do, God’s anger turns to unusual justice.  Still both old and new believers get on a high horse against the evils of our times and we find them holding out nothing to compare to what God has done in Christ to assist the needy.  I suppose these righteous vigilantes know nothing about God’s saving grace and his ongoing intercession.  Pity.

Keep your anger down, get on the shine-a-light train

Cursing the darkness probably happens a lot more often than anyone might want to admit, but I do not expect the angels avenging Israel’s dysfunction or American malfunctions to call themselves out any time soon.  They all are sure that making offenders disappear is the righteous thing to do.  Whither Netanyahu, Vladimir, and all the thuggish weaklings of our times?

This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger;  for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

(James 1:19-20, NASB)