Lessons from Scripture on justice and judgement

Prophetic outlook for the coming days

A lesson from Amos on trusting God in times of great shaking

Whose words can we trust?

Who is God holding accountable in Britain – and why?

We at Prophecy Today are encouraging our readers to pray in a focussed way as we face an inevitable shaking of the nation. Looking around the world at one catastrophe after another, it is rather like the situation in Amos’s time.

At the beginning of the Book of Amos the prophet considered one nation surrounding Israel after another whom God was calling to repentance. Then he turned to Judah and Israel last of all: “Thus says the Lord: for three transgressions of Israel and for four I will not turn away its punishment…” (Amos 2:6). Proud Israel may have felt immune from God’s displeasure and quite ready to watch him judge other nations, but Israel of all nations should have known the ways of God. The time did come when it was no use praying for God to turn back his judgment.

So it will be for Britain, which once built herself upon the foundation of Scripture and chose to declare herself a Christian nation, faithful to God. We believe that God has said it is no use praying against the woe that will soon come to our nation, as part of the redemptive purposes of God.

Looking around the world at one catastrophe after another, it is rather like the situation in Amos’s time.

But who is being judged? Who has displeased God to bring this shaking upon us? My purpose in this article is to urge our readers to fine-tune their perspective, distinguishing the good from the bad in the nation, so that we might target our prayers effectively.

‘Church’ and ‘Nation’

For too long, many of us have over-generalised. We may want to pray for ‘the nation’. We may believe that ‘the Church’ must repent. There is some value in using these generalisations, but now perhaps the time has come for a sharper focus.

There is a diverse population in our nation and there are many branches of the Christian Church. There will always be areas for ‘Church’ and ‘nation’ to each address in collective repentance but if we are to understand God’s coming judgment fully, we should not bunch everything together as if all Christians (i.e. ‘the Church’) are apostate and all members of ‘the nation’ are being judged equally.

Achieving a Sharper Focus

As far as the Christian Church is concerned, surely God is pleased with many individual praying and serving Christians and many fellowships who seek holiness, true worship and outreach, desiring ‘holiness to the Lord’ constantly. They may still need to continue to listen to God and keep maturing, but they are willing.

God knows those who are seeking to walk close to him, so the general call for repentance in the Church must be brought into sharper focus, in consideration of those branches and denominations that are wilfully departing from God’s ways and deafening themselves to the prophetic voice.

We should not bunch everything together as if all Christians are apostate and all members of ‘the nation’ are being judged equally.

The same goes for the nation as a whole. There is still a residue of our historical biblical heritage within Britain’s culture and many people, though as yet unbelievers, have consciences and mindsets cultivated by our biblical heritage. Their good deeds will not save them but there are many people loving their neighbours, bringing up their families well, and genuinely seeking answers to life’s fundamental questions, whom God is not seeking to punish for their sins but to win to salvation.

God’s Care for the ‘Good Figs’

There are no simple divisions in either Church or nation, but it is my suggestion that we cease to lump everyone into broad categories. This is reminiscent of the good figs and the bad figs of Jeremiah 24. When the Babylonian captivity came, God kept a special eye on those whom he considered to be ‘good figs’.

These ‘good figs’ still felt the effects of the captivity and all of them needed to consider their ways and their relationship with God, but God did not raise up the Babylonians to be the agents of judgment on Judah because of their wrongdoing.

More recently, take for example the catastrophe of Grenfell Tower. The way the local churches mobilised to care for the needy and the way the local community rose up to provide food and shelter was wonderful to see. Yet, it was negligence from those responsible for care and protection that had left the building vulnerable to be consumed by fire in the first place. It was those who did not properly secure the building who were responsible, not those who lived in the building.

Many such areas of poor leadership are evident behind the scenes in our national life, leading to God’s protection being removed for a season in our land, so that what has been sown will be reaped. But there are remnants of good in both Church and wider society that are not the prime cause of this judgment from on high.

When the Babylonian captivity came, God kept a special eye on those whom he considered to be ‘good figs’.

Shepherds Held Responsible

In the days of Israel and Judah, God’s main accusations were always against the shepherds (e.g. Jer 10:21), rather than the flock - for it is the leaders who determine the direction of a nation. Surely this is the same in Britain.

Every leader of our nation who serves in Government, constitutionally, is intended to serve in the light of biblical truth. This is on account of the Queen’s Coronation Oath. Where they have strayed as leaders (shepherds) they have led vulnerable subjects of the Queen (sheep) into wrong pasture. This applies especially to law changes that are against the ways of God, but also to changes in our national priorities, which have been increasingly for financial security over faithfulness to God.

The same goes for the shepherds of the churches, whether leaders of denominations or of individual fellowships. It is the responsibility of these shepherds to follow the Chief Shepherd and lead believers into good pastures.

Time to Seek God’s Heart

If there is woe on the horizon for Britain we need to fine-tune more clearly whom we believe God holds accountable and for what reason. It is time for us to seek the heart of God, which surely is full of sadness, and to avoid over-generalising, so that our prayers may come into clearer and more meaningful focus.

Meanwhile, there should be no sense of guilt descending on those who are willing to rise up, pray and serve when the nation as a whole is shaken, providing we carefully consider the precise reasons for Britain’s decline before God and come before him in confession and renewed willingness to serve the needy as the time draws near.

We have abandoned our national plumb line.

Who used chemical weapons in Syria? Who was responsible for the latest atrocity that killed civilians and children? Who can we believe – Russia? Assad? Iran? Turkey? Where can we obtain independent and reliable news reports? These are just some of the questions that people throughout the Western world are asking.

The USA has answered decisively that Assad is to blame so they have destroyed (allegedly?) the airfield from which the attack was (allegedly?) launched.

The pictures we have seen on TV news reports and in our newspapers, show horrific scenes of children suffering breathing problems from chemical weapons and wounds from bombing, but will we ever know who was responsible for these atrocities? Will we ever know the truth?

No Yardstick for Truth

If we have to judge between ISIS and Assad as to who is telling the truth, we really do have a problem. They are both Muslims and the Islamic religion sanctions the telling of lies if doing so promotes their religion. This makes it extremely difficult in any social relationships in mixed communities. You can never be quite sure which standard of truth is being applied.

Of course, we know that truth has been under attack for centuries – evidenced by Pilate’s famous cynical question at the fake trial of Jesus, “what is truth?” But something extraordinary seems to be happening in our lifetime, and in our nation: it is the deliberate distortion of truth. We hear so many reports of ‘fake news’, or ‘alternative facts’ and it is increasingly difficult to separate out fact from fiction, especially amidst a bombardment of tweets, news flashes, adverts and coded messages.

Something extraordinary seems to be happening in our lifetime, and in our nation: the deliberate distortion of truth.

Communication of the truth becomes increasingly complex, even in ordinary everyday things of life. When we listen to news reports on the radio we can never be sure of the veracity of what is being reported. The basic problem is the lack of agreed standards of truth. Without a yardstick, we cannot measure anything. There was even a report last week saying that the marathon that has been run in different places has been inaccurately measured, thus calling into question the times achieved by different athletes.

Amos Faced the Same Battle

The Prophet Amos faced the same battle for truth in the nation of Israel. People were all making up their own standards and the teaching given by Moses was being ignored. Everyone did as they pleased. The poor came off worst. They were cheated in the market by merchants who used dishonest scales or who brushed a lot of chaff and dust into the bag when they were selling corn to the housewife (Amos 8:5-6).

If a poor housewife went to court trying to get justice against a rich merchant, it would be the rich man who won because the judge was corrupt and accepted a bribe before he gave his decision, so the poor were deprived of justice in the courts (Amos 5:12).

Amos was outraged by this and many other things he saw in the nation such as selling the poor into slavery, a father and a son abusing a girl and drunken behaviour (Amos 2:6-8). He took this to God in prayer and got some very straight answers about judgment coming upon the nation.

Checking the City Walls

Amos was not only a righteous man but he was also compassionate and he pleaded with God to have mercy on the people. He had several revelations of what God was going to do and each time he pleaded that this would not happen. Eventually God showed him a picture of a man standing by a wall with a plumb line in his hand and God asked him “What do you see Amos?” “A plumb line,” he replied. Then the Lord said “Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer” (Amos 7:8).

Amos knew that there was no further point in arguing. He had seen the city engineer regularly checking the city walls with a plumb line. They were looking for the wall becoming out of line – out of exact perpendicular. In particular, the engineer had to look for bulges.

Our problem is our lack of agreed standards of truth. Without a yardstick, we cannot measure anything.

The city walls were built with an outer and an inner wall of stone with a gap between. The gap was usually filled with rubble which often also contained household rubbish. It was this rubbish that presented a danger because it could sometimes generate heat which could put pressure upon the outer and inner walls causing them to bulge. The bulge meant that the wall could crack and suddenly fall, leaving the city open to the invasion of enemies.

The engineer had to check for the bulges which indicated that there was corruption inside the wall. When Amos saw this, he got the message that God was communicating to him.

There would come a point when the corruption in the nation would become so strong that family life and harmonious community relationships would all be affected by the lies and injustice of corrupt officials and lawless individuals. If the nation went on ignoring the warning signs of corruption and the cracks in the justice system, in family life and in community relations – the outcome would be disastrous. It would happen without further warning, in an instant when nobody was expecting it.

Message to Britain

The Prophet Isaiah had a similar message:

Because you have rejected this message, relied on oppression and depended on deceit, this sin will become for you like a high wall, cracked and bulging, that collapses suddenly in an instant. It will break in pieces like pottery, shattered so mercilessly that among its pieces not a fragment will be found for taking coals from a hearth or scooping water out of the cistern. (Isa 30:12-14) [emphasis added]

This is a message to Britain today. There have been many warning signs over a number of years of corruption among officials in our nation - in the banking industry, among our politicians, in local government and business as well as in family life and community relationships. The savage beating of a young asylum seeker in Croydon has shocked the nation – that there can be such barbaric cruelty and violence among young people in Britain is horrifying.

If our nation goes on ignoring the warning signs of corruption – the outcome will be sudden and disastrous.

But this is simply evidence of corruption in the nation: the breakdown of family life and the abandonment of teaching truth in our schools. When we ceased to teach the Bible in state schools we abandoned the plumb line of truth. Now we are reaping the inevitable rewards of a lawless generation. But it’s no good blaming the young people – we are all to blame!

The only hope for the future is repentance and turning to the word of God for his truth to be enshrined at the heart of the nation. Jesus promised, “When he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). This should surely be the focal point of prayer among Christians for our leaders, both Church and State!