Turn Things Around?
It has been really hard in my adult lifetime to see things slide downhill in the world. We do not know when the huge set of events that the Bible says are the “last days” will happen, but it surely seems like they are on us. As I read 2 Timothy 3:1-4, it seems descriptive of 2023 America. “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God”. So, we ask ourselves, is God done with us or could we turn things around?
God may very well be done with us, a sobering fact of the description of the last days is America doesn’t appear there anywhere! Considering our superpower status, with all the wars and upheavals of the last days, how could that be, unless our nation imploded somehow? Lots of nations in the history of the world have been pretty bad, some are no longer recognized on maps. Is God done with us or could we turn things around?
The divided kingdom of Israel is an interesting study. There were nineteen kings in the northern kingdom and all of them were notably evil. That was also true in the southern kingdom of Judah except among their twenty kings were eight who did a lot of right things, and I point out that Judah lasted as a nation longer than northern Israel did.
If we look at the history of the world, people who follow God are a minority in any nation, but they can be a preservative in a nation that is circling the drain. I recall Abraham begging God in prayer (Genesis 18) not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if fifty righteous people were found there. Their fate stayed with them, as Abraham dickered it clear down to ten righteous people, and there were not even ten.
The Hope of Josiah
In my reading through the Bible in a year, recently I ran across the story of Josiah. He was one of the good kings of Judah, in spite of being son and grandson of two of the worst of all, Manasseh and Amon. He repaired the temple, restored the Passover celebration that had not been observed for almost 700 years. He got rid of all the idols, mediums, and spiritists, the abominations that had been tolerated and embraced. Righteousness was the national standard, and he gave them leadership.
Was he just a good guy, or did something else happen? Yes it did. When they were renovating the temple, Hilkiah the high priest found a copy of the book of the law, pretty much the only Bible they had in any sort of print, Genesis through Deuteronomy. He read it, and it jolted him so much, he gave it to Shaphan, who as I read it was Josiah’s chief of staff, and it jolted him so much that he read it to the king. And it jolted the king so much, “when the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes” (2 Kings 22:11). That was the sign of extreme repentance and mourning.
Think about it, how many hundred years had the Bible gathered dust? And having read it, Josiah saw how far downhill his nation had gone, feeling that God ought to judge them for what they had let happen. Josiah went to God with it, and this was God’s response.
“‘Regarding the words which you have heard because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before Me, I truly have heard you,’ declares the Lord. ‘Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes will not see all the evil which I will bring on this place’” (2 Kings 22:19,20). So yes he did turn things around, what would happen in the future was up to the kings who followed him, but you see in the Lord’s words, that was not going to happen. But for his time, things turned around.
Our nation may be destined for judgment, but what will it take to turn things around? Might I suggest that the Bible has been allowed to gather dust in our nation and people are not paying attention to God? What would it be like if a bunch of us blew off the dust like Josiah did, and start paying attention to God’s word? Maybe, for a while at least, we could turn things around?
