I pray that the coronavirus troubles the world now experiences may result in massive repentance worldwide and a great revival.
God powerfully interjects Himself in supernatural ways when things are bad among men—typically in natural disasters or great miracles. When men conduct ourselves responsibly before God, heeding His Word, He generally blesses, or Providentially resists only individuals behind the scenes. For this more or less faithfully responsible condition, the condition largely experienced by the United States in our history, God requires a faithful, just and active people.
How will we respond to the present difficulty? Will we rise and repent, or curse our Lord overtly or possibly tacitly? In other words, will we reject His grace in the form of correction, or will we snub Him, business as usual?
In Israel’s latter history, their character had eventually so declined that only a tiny remnant benefitted from the Babylonian invasion and exile—God’s chastening and judgment. The restoration under Nehemiah didn’t even go smoothly.
The problem is quality of character. A people of some degree of character can quickly respond in repentance and rise to the call by the Holy Spirit. But the condition of that soil is critical. If the soil is sterile, shallow, choked with weeds, the Good Seed does not prosper. For example, God led Israel through the wilderness for forty years, intensely working the character and faith of the young people to prepare them for self-government and godly justice as the nation of Israel. Presently, we have become so damaged by demonic education for the past now two hundred years, as Bobbie Ames well documents in her soon to be published Nordskog Publishing book—Land that I Love—I wonder if we might still be able to rise even to God’s forceful intervention.
I certainly pray it is so, and remain hopeful. I pray our inspiration and efforts to represent Christ to the world will be like Paul’s and not Noah’s.
The Lord can do it!
To regain the character for self-government, liberty and blessing, we must see certain general corrections among our people. We must repent unto a deep re-embracing of the fundamentals of applied faith Biblical understanding. The church must become far more epistemologically self-aware as Van Til and Rushdoony termed it. That is, we must understand how and what we know. We must realize the limits of knowledge that God imposes—accepting the divine disadvantage of faith—so that we obey Him despite our humanistic better judgment. We must accept what appears as epistemological tension in knowledge—the both/and fulness that derives from our God’s Triunity. We have learned to accept God as the Holy Three Persons, yet One God. We have learned to accept Christ and man and God. We must also learn to accept liberty with law, freedom with self-restraint. We must trust God to bless when we lay down our lives for Him and our neighbors—not intuitive. We must re-learn the Biblical wisdom that enabled early Israel and early America to practice self-government, justice, liberty, dominion, and generosity.
It took 1600 years of Christian history to begin learn and practice it all in the first place. How long will it take to re-learn? It is amazing what a tough sell the underlying principles of Christian liberty is in this age. Yet if refuse to learn, we may see a long re-play of Middle Age struggling. I hope better.
This truth-in-tension in truth I mention here is the problem of the One and the Many, answered by the Trinitarian both/and inherent in all Scriptural truth, God’s reality for us. It is the equal ultimacy in whatever tension demanded, accepting it by faith, and doing our best to honor it.
Back to the original point that godly society requires a sound Biblical character in its people. The good soil that only occurs under husbandry, hence the need for a profound renewal in the common education of Christians everywhere upon the Biblical principles the best hearts and minds of recent history discovered in our Providential history—sound Biblical theology lived in real peoples’ real lives. I mean such people as Marshall Foster, R. J. Rushdoony, Verna Hall and Rosalie Slater and many others, including some of our own NPI authors.
God expects His people to mature, accept responsibility by faith, starting with an investment in re-learning the best understanding of God’s Word toward the reality of Christ’s prayer, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Ron Kirk is editor of the Bell Ringer, an ordained minister of the Gospel, and pioneering educator—restoring and extending a Biblical and historic system of education and applied Biblical faith. He wrote the Nordskog Publishing title Thy Will Be Done: When All Nations Call God Blessed.
Amen!