Of His announced three-legged strategy for dealing with humans, God’s Grace is the most pronounced and longest lasting. 1 Given our human nature, it is also the one we both understand and need most. The remaining two legs, judgment and righteousness, are much shorter, timewise, and may be our least appreciated. However, these latter two may well be a type of lever for the first, Grace. Like me, have you noticed how much we hear and even sing much more about Grace during what may be His times of judgment and chastisement? Isn’t it best to appreciate and embrace Grace when He lavishes it upon us, apart from any judgments or chastisements? Go figure! We seriously need to re-think our posture and responses vis-à-vis Grace. But how?
A major aspect of Grace on which we need to focus our attention is God’s early warning system (EWS). It is steps He takes to signal to us when Grace, to unrepentant sinners and saints alike, is about to give way to judgment (for sinners) or chastisement (for saints). Both of these are meant to trigger repentance and a more righteous walk. But historically, individuals, societies and nations alike tend to either mis-read His EWS, or to ignore and reject it altogether. As a result, they have suffered the tragic consequences …unnecessarily. So with all of our smart technologies and modern accomplishments in every field of endeavor, are we smart enough to learn from their history, or will our pride similarly blind us to lessons they refused to learn?
God’s first EWS step is a spate of prophets or ‘seers’ who are much more attuned spiritually than the average person. More in tune with righteous spiritual forces, they perceive developments within, and receive messages from God’ Spirit. Thus they are well placed, even commissioned to sound warning signals to less spiritually perceptive people. However, since evil spiritual forces may see and hear some of what these prophets see and hear, they are motivated to block, distort or nullify the messages. They accomplish this by sowing seeds of doubt and confusion about prophetic reports. Stirring up antithetical reports, views and opinions among far less or totally non-spiritual people, unfortunately, these evil forces typically win-the-day. Why? It comes down to human pride to ‘be free’ from external influences. Spiritually blind people fail to perceive external forces by which they are being manipulated for evil.
‘Prophets were in Old Testament days’, you might snap. Indeed, but The Lord gives to some believers today the gift of prophecy to edify The Body of Christ. 2 Moreover, a holy angel advised Apostle John, The Revelator:
The testimony of Jesus is The Spirit of Prophecy.
(Revelation 19:10)
Adding this insight to The Great Commission (to preach The Gospel of Jesus the world over) suggests, to varying degrees, all true Christ-believers are to walk in a prophetic role as we live before, and testify of Jesus to each other and then to the unbelieving world.
God’s second EWS step is a spate of preliminary judgments or chastisements, designed to serve as ‘warning shots across the bow’. With these, He effectively underscores the messages of righteous prophets and seers, and counteracts deceptions sown by evil spiritual forces. Thus, He allows His second EWS to sound alarms gradually, and more consistently than any set of prophets can do. But today, even these alarms are increasingly attenuated or flat out denied, then ignored …by our prideful logic, with the help of our data-driven science. Because we are prone to believe practically any message that explains away God’s EWS, we are thus left with no effective warning system at all. Imagine that!
Since Grace is the most pronounced and longest lasting strategic leg of God’s dealing with humans, His EWS is stretched out over l-o-n-g periods of time. In light of this, we typically fail to connect-the-dots, and therefore, greatly discount His EWS. Thus, we become set-up for the full weight of His harsh judgments and chastisements. That’s typically when we remember the song, Amazing Grace.
But there’s always hope…
Stay tuned for Part 2
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2 See: 1 Corinthians 12:10
