When the Earth
Experiences Your Judgments
(Isa.26:9-11)
As we move closer to the return of
What is the role of the prophetic in such heart-breaking
circumstances? When apocalyptic scenarios become last night’s television news,
how can a word from the God of Jacob equip, encourage and edify the Body of
Messiah? Does God
anything to do with catastrophes that shake the earth? To be more direct, does
God have something to say about the catastrophes that are now shaking the
earth, and which will soon increase in intensity and severity? At
the heart of the matter is the question: does God want to communicate and
is He really communicating what He
is doing on the earth today to men and women touched by the spirit of
prophecy?
These questions are very important. We are thankful that
there is opportunity to consider them, as well as opportunity to help bring a
measure of balance and clarity regarding the ministry of the prophetic – for all
believers in general, and to believers who love
Offending the mind, revealing the
heart
“God offends the
mind to reveal the heart,” says
The Apostle Paul
agrees, adding that one of the purposes of the prophetic is to reveal the
secrets of men’s hearts, and sometimes even to reveal those secrets
publicly. He explains that if, when believers are
gathered, “all prophesy, and an unbeliever
or an ungifted man enters, he is convicted by all, his is called to account by
all; the secrets of his heart are disclosed. And so he will fall on his face and
worship God, declaring that God is certainly among you” (1
Cor.14:24-25).
Though it
sometimes brings glory to God for Him to conceal a matter (see Prov.25:2), there
are many other times when He delights in revealing His will and His
purpose: “Hear the
word that YHVH has spoken… O sons of
One of the core
values of the prophetic is to communicate the heart of God to a people who are
thirsty and hungry. “Behold, the days are coming, declares YHVH God, when
I will send a famine on the land. Not a famine for bread or a thirst for water,
but rather for hearing the words of YHVH. People will stagger from sea to sea,
and from the north even to the east. They will go to and fro to seek the word of
YHVH – but they will not find it!” (Amos 8:11-12).
Now more than ever it is imperative that the word of God
be heard. But it will not be heard unless it is boldly preached. “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not
believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will
they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as
it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good
things’” (Rom.10:14-15).
Why catastrophic
judgments?
God does not wish “for anyone to perish, but for all to come to
repentance” (2 Pet.3:9). Yet natural catastrophes cause people to
perish. Why then does God allow or even catalyze such
judgments?
When God shines
His light on darkness, a power encounter erupts between two
kingdoms. The end result is clear: Light triumphs over
darkness. “The Light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness does not overwhelm it” (John 1:5). Note that John is
using ‘battle terminology,’ words of warfare. When darkness in a society takes
hold and rises to a certain level, God has often brought the ‘severe mercy’ of
natural catastrophes or other judgments to bear. His judgments are a response to
evil. They are catalyzed by evil. His judgments also expose evil and destroy
evil. The clearest example of such a judgment on an international scale is Noah,
who alone escaped the Flood, along with his immediate family.
Yet it is painfully true that innocent bystanders are
sometimes caught in the crossfire when such a ‘battle royal’ breaks out. When
God judged the nation of
Part of the prophetic calling of all believers is ‘to
let our little light shine,’ to expose darkness by shining what light we have on
localized sources of darkness. Of course, that little light is none other than
Yeshua, the Light of the World who dwells within us (see John 9:5; Matt.5:14).
“Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds
of darkness, but instead even expose them . . . All things become visible when
they are exposed by the light…” (Eph.5:11,13).
One judgment, two different
responses
Not everyone wants to have ‘that little light’ shining
on him. One of the reasons Ahab King of Israel did not want to inquire of YHVH
through the prophet Micaiah ben Imlah was because the prophet “does not prophesy good concerning me, but
evil” (1 Kings 22:8). Ahab tried to explain away what the prophet was
saying by turning the tables on him – suggesting that Micaiah had both a bad
attitude and a judgmental spirit. Rather than Ahab humbly accepting
that his own sins had brought judgment down, Ahab tried to charge the prophet
with presumption, and accused him of not speaking from God but rather from
malice. The rest of the chapter plays out the sad ending of this
dramatic event.
Actually, the Scriptures do not blush when describing
the judgments of God. The Bible also notes that very few people are going to learn
what God wants to communicate through His judgments. Over 2,700
years ago the prophet Isaiah explained, “When the earth experiences Your judgments, the
inhabitants of the world learn righteousness” (Isa.26:9b). Natural
catastrophes are meant to draw men’s attention to consider what is on God’s mind
and heart. Some men and women hear His voice roaring ‘out of the storm’ and
above its din: “Then YHVH answered Job out
of the storm and said, ‘Now gird up your loins like a man. I will ask you and
you will instruct Me. Will you really annul My judgment? Will you condemn Me
that you may be justified? Or do you have an arm like God, and can you thunder
with a voice like His?”(Job 40:6-9)
Isaiah continues his message in the next verse, adding
that the wicked just
don’t get it. They do not see the hand of God in His judgments.
Though the power and kingliness of the God of Israel is revealed through natural
disasters, the wicked man refuses both to recognize God’s hand of judgment and
to turn toward the Light. “Though the wicked
is shown favor, he does not learn righteousness. He deals unjustly in the land
of uprightness and does not perceive the majesty of YHVH” (Isa.
26:10).
History reveals
that this pattern is part of God’s dealings with mankind. The Lord reveals
His mighty arm and His holy nature through catastrophic judgments. This offends
the minds of mankind and reveals the thoughts of everyone’s hearts. In the end
most people don’t understand what God is doing. But those who do understand are
described as men and women who are learning God’s lessons about
righteousness.
It is worth meditating on these matters in the light of
John 16:8, where Yeshua describes the ministry of the Holy Spirit: “And He, when
He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.”
The whole world is indeed sinful and in need of redemption. The whole world also
stands under God’s judgment. But repentance is the key which is “knockin’ on
heaven’s door” and it will open up the floodgates of rescue and
safety.
Faulty Towers and Unrepentant
Hearts
Throughout the
ages Jewish prophets echoed certain themes, including the guilt of the
Yeshua was not saying that no one was allowed to know
why the tower fell. Nor was He saying that the 18 men killed in its collapse
were guiltless. He Himself ended His teaching with a prophetic and
time-sensitive warning of soon-coming judgment to the entire Jewish nation (Luke
13:6-9).
Yeshua stated that there was plenty of guilt to go
around – the 18 were guilty, but so were the majority of
What Yeshua
wanted His hearers to understand is that, even though catastrophic events are
due to sin, they are meant to be a tool in God’s hands to shock all of us into
repentance. If we do not recognize that God’s
hand is somehow in the catastrophic event, we will not humble our hearts and
soften our spirits before the God of
Judgment and the
King
The connection between sin and judgment is part of a
biblical worldview. The awareness that God will punish sins even in the ‘here
and now’ is supposed to motivate us to bow low before His footstool in the fear
of God (see Isa.11:1-5). But the Bible also teaches us that it is not always the
individual who is directly in the crosshairs when God’s judgments roll like
thunder across a nation. Sometimes God brings judgment on a people due to the
sins of their leadership.
One such example is found in 2 Samuel 24 and I
Chronicles 21. God was angry with
Since YHVH had given David much, He would now hold him
responsible for much. God’s judgment on David would be most severe (see
Rom.2:4-11; Amos 3:2; Isa.40:2). Through the words of the prophet Gad, God gave
David three choices of judgment – three years of famine, three months of
military invasion, or three days of plague. David chose the shortest possible
judgment, declaring that it is better to fall directly into God’s hand of
judgment than into that of
The prophesied plague sent from YHVH fell on
“Then David lifted
up his eyes and saw the angel of YHVH standing between earth and heaven, with
his drawn sword in his hand, stretched out over
The biblical
principle here is that judgment on a nation can be due to the sins of the
country’s leadership. This scenario actually happened with David, a man after
God’s own heart, and with
When God brings
judgment on a nation for the sins of its leadership, our 21st century
minds may get offended. Please don’t get offended! Press on through to the other
side. The God of Jacob is testing our hearts and revealing our thoughts. He is
calling us to repentance and to acknowledge our nation’s
sin.
When any nation’s
leadership actively campaigns and brings pressure to bear to shrink
When
Do Not Prophesy at
In the year 755 BC (approximately) a gentleman farmer
from Tekoa in the
Amos’ message of
judgment upset the powers that be. Specifically it upset
Amaziah the priest of
Amaziah the priest sent a message from
Amos’ response was twofold. He answered with quiet
sarcasm, saying that he actually was not a professional prophet nor in any way
connected with the prophetic guilds, the schools of the prophets. His specialty,
he explained, was harvesting figs and shepherding sheep. Nevertheless, God took
Amos from following after the sheep (as He had done with David as well) and sent
him with a prophetic word to the people of
Amos, Jonah and Joel are biblical examples of how God
will sometimes cross national boundaries to bring a word of repentance, a
warning of judgment or even a prophetic explanation of judgments in process.
Sometimes God used Judeans to speak to Israelites, Israelites to speak to
Assyrians, or even Messianic Jews to speak to Romans and Greeks. Jeremiah and
Isaiah were used to prophesy to all the major superpowers of their time, as well
as to all the surrounding hostile Arab nations. The moral of the story is,
“When God wants to ‘prophesy in
When silence is
dangerous
As the Jewish sometimes-prophet Bob Dylan has remarked
in his remarkable voice, “The times, they are a’ changin’”. The God of the Old
Testament is the God of storms and earthquakes (see Habakkuk 3). And His
handiwork is beginning to show up as the lead story on the nightly news. The God
of the Exodus is incrementally revealing His mighty arm at present. Part of the
reason He is doing this is buried in the pages of the Hebrew Prophets. He is
letting the superpowers of the world know that He is “exceedingly jealous for
The God of Israel wants the superpowers of the world to
have a revelatory experience – to experience that “he who touches (
As events barrel forward, God’s eyes are roaming to and
fro throughout the earth, looking to strongly support those whose hearts are
completely His (as King Asa said in 2 Chron.16:9). Now is the time to seek God’s
face and to dedicate ourselves afresh for His service and His kingdom. Now is
the time, as Isaiah says (see Isa.58:1), to cry out loudly and not hold back,
raising our voices like a shofar
and declaring to the House of Jacob (and to all the families of the earth) their
sins.
Now is not the
time to be afraid of what governments may say, or of what financial supporters
of one’s ministry might say. Judgment is certainly
not a nice or easy message to bring. But it is part of the whole counsel of God. And as
we move into a season of God revealing His holy arm in the sight of all nations,
we will need to be able ambassadors of Messiah, not hemming and hawing, not
embarrassed or ashamed of what our Master is doing (see 2 Cor.5:20).
“If anyone wishes to
come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For
whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My
sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the
whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My
words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in glory, and the
glory of the Father and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:23-26).
“What is truth?” (Pontius
Pilate in John 18:38)
Today there are bona fide believers who are certain that
God either cannot or will not communicate directly with mankind. But as God’s
voice begins to thunder out more loudly across the world, many of these dear men
and women will soon realize that the God of the New Testament is also the God of
the Old Testament and, to paraphrase Francis Schaeffer, this God “is here, and
He is not silent,”.
But there is a
cost to speaking truth. Pilate questioned Yeshua about
truth one Friday morning and warned Him to be careful. But it was actually
Pontius who would soon learn the cost of sidestepping the Truth. The truth
costs, and standing for God is going to cost us. As God’s message gets better
understood, many people will harden their heart to it as did Pharaoh. At that
time it will cost people more to open their mouths and speak God’s heart. That
cost may entail being sniped at from the world or even from fellow believers. It
may result in imprisonment, torture or death. But assuredly, saints, these days
are coming. At the same time remember – we will also stand before kings and
rulers, proclaiming His heart with boldness and great courage! As the song says,
“These are the days of Elijah!”
Now is the time to count the cost. Now is the time to
get ready. Now is the time to commit ourselves to Micaiah’s declaration in 1
Kings 22:13-14: “Then the messenger who went
to summon Micaiah spoke to him saying, ‘Behold now, the words of the prophets
are uniformly favorable to the king. Please let your word be like the word of
one of them, and speak favorably. But Micaiah said, “As YHVH lives, what YHVH
says to me, that I will speak.”
Jeremiah warns us, “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you
out, then how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in a land of peace,
how will you manage in the jungle of the
The choice is now
upon us: either be prophetic or be politically correct. Either fear God or fear
man. Please God or please man. And be aware – the cost of gasoline is not the
only thing that has recently gone up in price. The cost that believers will have
to pay for friendship with the world has just now gone up as well (see James
4:4).
*
*
*
As the world
begins to shake, let us press into Him – to hear His heartbeat, and to get
marching orders and clear prophetic direction for the challenges and battles
that lie ahead.
In Messiah Yeshua, the Lord of
Armies,
Avner Boskey
Donations can be sent
to:
FINAL FRONTIER
MINISTRIES
Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal)
through:
www.davidstent.org