We’re heading for yet more troubles in this country.
As I read the paper today, it says that,
‘As the government’s scientific advisors call for an immediate curtailment of indoor mixing to combat the spread of Omicron, the Prime Minister is considering a range of potential measures: from new guidelines on restricting social contact to a third national lockdown.’
He’s getting advice from the SAGE advisory committee. You know the SAGE advisory committee; SAGE means ‘wise’. I’m not sure how wise these gentlemen are, they seem to be pretty much a bunch of communists who want to enslave us. 🙂
Never mind; they’ve said they want to have ‘indoor mixing curtailed’ to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed.
In a meeting on Thursday, the scientists concluded that waiting until after Christmas to impose restrictions would be too late.
The group described ‘indoor mixing’ as the biggest risk factor in the spread of Omicron, suggesting reducing group sizes, increasing physical distances, reducing duration of contacts and closing high-risk premises.
So, they might consider we’re a high-risk premise, I don’t know, but it’s all closing in when you look at what’s taking place, and it’s not good (to put it mildly).
People see we’re in this unique situation where we see a worldwide crisis causing immense suffering to people and the answer is: what is God’s saying about it? What’s God’s solution?
I’m going to read a passage from the Book of Isaiah tonight to start off. Isaiah chapter 59:
Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, That it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy, That it cannot hear. 2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear. 3 For your hands are defiled with blood, And your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken lies, Your tongue has muttered perversity. 4 No one calls for justice, Nor does any plead for truth. They trust in empty words and speak lies; They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity. 5 They hatch vipers’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; He who eats of their eggs dies, And from that which is crushed a viper breaks out. 6 Their webs will not become garments, Nor will they cover themselves with their works; Their works are works of iniquity, And the act of violence is in their hands. 7 Their feet run to evil, And they make haste to shed innocent blood; Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; Wasting and destruction are in their paths. 8 The way of peace they have not known, And there is no justice in their ways; They have made themselves crooked paths; Whoever takes that way shall not know peace.
Isaiah 59.1-8
9 Therefore justice is far from us, Nor does righteousness overtake us; We look for light, but there is darkness! For brightness, but we walk in blackness! 10 We grope for the wall like the blind, And we grope as if we had no eyes; We stumble at noonday as at twilight; We are as dead men in desolate places. 11 We all growl like bears, And moan sadly like doves; We look for justice, but there is none; For salvation, but it is far from us. 12 For our transgressions are multiplied before You, And our sins testify against us; For our transgressions are with us, And as for our iniquities, we know them: 13 In transgressing and lying against the Lord, And departing from our God, Speaking oppression and revolt, Conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. 14 Justice is turned back, And righteousness stands afar off; For truth is fallen in the street, And equity cannot enter. 15 So truth fails, And he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.
Isaiah 59.9-15
Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him That there was no justice. 16 He saw that there was no man, And wondered that there was no intercessor; Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him; And His own righteousness, it sustained Him. 17 For He put on righteousness as a breastplate, And a helmet of salvation on His head; He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, And was clad with zeal as a cloak. 18 According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay, Fury to His adversaries, Recompense to His enemies; The coastlands He will fully repay. 19 So shall they fear The name of the Lord from the west, And His glory from the rising of the sun; When the enemy comes in like a flood, The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. 20 “The Redeemer will come to Zion, And to those who turn from transgression in Jacob,” Says the Lord. 21 “As for Me,” says the Lord, “this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants’ descendants,” says the Lord, “from this time and forevermore.”
Isaiah 59.15-21
Says the Lord: from this time and forevermore.
Praise the Lord!
Why doesn’t God do something about it? It’s a question which is being asked here.
The Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear.
That’s the answer which the prophet gives.
We’re living in this unique situation with a worldwide crisis causing immense suffering to millions of people and the questions people are asking: Why doesn’t God do something about it?
How can you have a God of love and power when there’s all this suffering?
God’s people are wondering why He doesn’t rescue them from their trials. And they wonder if God has perhaps lost His strength, if His hand has become shortened.
Isaiah the prophet shows them that this is not the case.
So, can God be love and power at the same time and still see all this suffering going on in the world?
If you love someone and you have the power to end the suffering, wouldn’t you do it?
Isaiah addresses those who wonder if God wasn’t all-powerful, and why their suffering continues.
If you’ve seen the film the ‘The Hiding Place’ where Corrie Ten Boom who helped save Jews from the Nazis in Holland ended up being arrested by the Nazis, taken to Ravensbrück concentration camp.
While at the concentration camp, she has a little Bible study meeting. She has managed to smuggle the Bible in, and she has a group of people around her. They’re studying the Bible and this woman looks on and sort of mocks them and says: ‘How can you believe in your God when you see all this evil around you?‘
And she shows her her hand and says, ‘I was the first violinist at the Warsaw Symphony Orchestra. Now, look at my hand, it’s being crushed by the Nazis. Did your God do this?’
And she continues saying,
‘If your God is love and does nothing about it, nothing about the concentration camp and all the things about us, if He is love and does nothing about it, how can He be powerful? If He is powerful and does nothing about it, He is not love.’
It’s a question which people ask isn’t it? A question through which people say, ‘Well, why doesn’t God do something about it?’
There’s a rabbi called rabbi Harold Kushner. He wrote a book called when ‘Bad things happen to good people’.
It’s a bestseller, it was in the New York Times’ bestseller list for a whole year. And the whole point of the book is to say that God is all loving but not all powerful. God is good but not sovereign; therefore, when bad things happen to good people, it is because events are out of God’s control.
In fact, Kushner advises his readers to learn to love God and forgive Him despite His limitations.
Well, that’s not how God sees it or how we see it from the point of view of scripture.
It’s certainly not the God of the Bible because it says here,
the Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save.
God can do anything.
Isaiah says simply behold this, see this. He says also,
nor is His ear heavy that it cannot hear.
Perhaps the problem is that God hasn’t got the information that He needs. He doesn’t lack power, but He directs the knowledge of our problem or even interest in what’s taking place.
But that isn’t the situation. God is able to see and to hear all that’s going on.
And God is not deaf nor is He dead. But God can see what’s happening and the prophet goes on to say the problem is in verse 2
2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear.
Isaiah 59.2
When God sees all this stuff going on, He says that,
‘the problem is not with Me, it’s with you, you, the human race. Your sins have separated you from your God.‘
And we look at this what’s happened with Covid, we look at all the nations which have been involved and we ask: Are they following God? Are they doing what God wants? Why are they doing the opposite of what God wants?
Where did it start?
It started in China. Did it start in the laboratory or did it start in the wet market?
One of the two, but the point is: China is a country that has been persecuting, attacking Christians, increasing its persecution of Christians over the last two or three years, causing Christians to put up images of Mao and Xi in their temples, in their churches, and to worship them as well as worshiping God.
They are wanting to change the Bible so that it conforms with communism, and persecute Christians in huge numbers as well as pursuing Muslims.
A country which is under the judgment of God for these things has sent this virus all around the world.
What about the Western nations?
Does God see the Western nations and say, ‘You know, you’re all great Christian nations, so I’m going to look after you?’
We have a history of Christianity, particularly in this part of the world, but that history has been trashed, and has been increasingly trashed.
As we look at what’s taking place, we have this woke ideology, which is being inflicted upon us all the time, which says that all gods are equal, all lifestyles are equal. That it doesn’t matter if you’re gay or you’re whatever, it’s all the same, and we should accept everybody according to however they want to live their lives.
Basically, they’re saying that there’s no good and evil, there are no absolute standards, right and wrong.
Basically, you can live how you like and if you say that there’s something wrong with that, then you’re wrong and you’re doing something evil because you’re being condemnatory.
If you say that it’s wrong to teach children that they can change gender, you’re being transphobic, and you should be censored for that.
And we even have the government trying to make a law now (I’ve spoken about it before) about conversion therapy according to which you can say to people whatever you like about LGBT+ issues, you can tell children that they can change their gender, you can tell them that homosexuality is good, that they should follow homosexuality but, if you go in and say that ‘No! You shouldn’t these things! You are wrong in the sight of God’’, then you’ll be committing a hate crime, you’ll be doing something which is against what God wants!
We see that the Western nations are piling on sin upon sin. Occultism, immorality, our whole entertainment system is full of all kinds of perversity and wickedness.
We see the Muslim world also persecuting Christians and growing persecution in Africa as well as the Middle East, and Christians being persecuted for their faith in Jesus.
All of these things are bringing the judgment of God upon the nation.
Therefore, as the nations are looking for God to solve their problems, and they’re doing these things which are an abomination in His sight and against God, we see that they are putting themselves under judgment.
We must look at the state of the world ravaged by Covid and ask: Where is God?
God is watching and weeping over the things which we’re doing. And God’s verdict about He sees us do is in verses 3 to 8:
3 For your hands are defiled with blood, And your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken lies, Your tongue has muttered perversity. 4 No one calls for justice, Nor does any plead for truth.
Isaiah 59.3-4
We also see in our media a complete turning away from the truth, delivering propaganda all the time. And if you say something which goes against the propaganda line, you become an evil person.
It’s inevitable that, out of this situation, you’re going to have disaster after disaster which is not encouraging of course, because we live inside that situation.
Obviously, if we believe in the Lord, we’re separating ourselves from the world system, but we still must live in the world system. We’re going to be affected by the things which happen in the world.
We must see that God is saying ‘Here, there is a problem in us, in humans’, and that we’re part of the human race.
God calls us to come out of the sin of the human race, but we can’t escape the fact that we live in a world which is contaminated by sin and we’re affected by the things which go on, and we see disaster after disaster coming.
If you believe the Bible, indeed, if you believe in the end times (which I believe) – that we’re living in the end times then, you know that these things are going to happen in the days before Jesus returns.
Hello Tony
I have been a reader of LFTLD for some years. I am most impressed by your historical, political and of course your Scriptural knowledge, and you make a strong case for the approach of the Second Coming of Jesus. But I see little comment about the man of lawlessness, the Antichrist. Without this I don’t see how the Second Coming of Jesus can take place. Perhaps you could comment?
Hello Tony
I have been a reader of LFTLD for some years. I am most impressed by your historical, political and of course your Scriptural knowledge, and you make a strong case for the approach of the Second Coming of Jesus. But I see little comment about the man of lawlessness, the Antichrist. Without this I don’t see how the Second Coming of Jesus can take place. Perhaps you could comment?
Hi John,
I have written and preached quite a lot about the Antichrist. If you haven’t already, you can check my thinking on the topic through this link: https://lightforthelastdays.co.uk/?s=antichrist
God bless!