Government Intervention
It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 10:31 NASB
Terrifying thing – Is there anything really terrifying in your life? If you live in the Western world or in nations where Western ideas are part of the culture, you probably would have a very short list. Perhaps some incurable disease. Perhaps. These days we expect to be plied with medications so that even the most excruciatingly painful illnesses are made tolerable. Perhaps the death of someone very close. But this happens quite often and we survive. We don’t think too much about the typical horrors of living in some of the world’s worst dictatorships or destroyed economies. Those frights are far removed; just images on a television screen. The truth is that we in the West have used government to shelter us from really terrifying events. It takes an act of God—a hurricane, a tornado, an earthquake—to really shake us with sudden terror. As a result, we probably don’t appreciate the impact of this verse. We live in the nanny-state. Don’t worry. Be happy.
But a great part of the world today, and most of the world in the past, knew terrifying things intimately. War and oppression followed by slavery. Torture, agonizing execution, pestilence, sweeping plagues, the Black Death, starvation, natural and man-made destruction. These and many, many more left the ordinary person in a rather constant state of deep anxiety and unquenchable fear. Of course, men and women go on. Life continues. But life four thousand years ago, four hundred years ago, never contemplated the kind of insulation we have today. Perhaps that’s why terrorists have such an impact. A thousand years ago their tactics would have been par for the course.
While we would never wish to return to those days of complete uncertainty, perhaps we can’t really appreciate the devastating implication of the author without at least imagining what it would be like. If we don’t attempt this exercise, we are likely to treat the threat as merely metaphor, or a reality for those wicked infidels who refuse to accept our truth. We never think that such terror might befall us. As a result we walk away with a one-sided God. We have a Christmas God instead of a holocaust God. We seek peace and joy and plenty of good gifts instead of stumbling over God in the gas chambers or the ovens. Since we have no real experience of unadulterated evil, we lack the experience of unbridled grace. We cook our spirituality on medium.
Is it really terrifying to fall into the hands of the living God? The Greek is phoberon. You will recognize phobos, that useful Greek term associated with many psychological imbalances (which is also a Greek idea). The Hebrew equivalent is yare. We could translate this as “a fearful thing,” but that lessens the impact. Sudden, sheer terror—life turned into flying shrapnel—is more likely the message. Perhaps we should ask the relevant question another way. If you put so much effort into avoiding confrontation with evil, how will you ever know the majesty of the good?
Topical Index: phobos, terrifying, evil, Hebrews 10:31
One thing IS for sure.. “the word of God endures forever.” God IS (now) our greatest threat and our only hope. Our only hope, our only prayer is – ~ Yeshua, thou Son of David, have mercy (show compassion) on me ~. We too, must pray, “Father, forgive me, for I (too) have sinned.”
He, the One who is incapable of a lie, has promised to each and to all- “Ask, and you will receive..” If we ask Him for “forgiveness” (there is NONE among us who have not failed to “transgress the Law”) will He? does He?
Friend, – listen. (Please!!) – There is therefore NOW- NO CONDEMNATION to those who are in Christ Jesus!!! Not only, but also. Not only does He forgive, but He restores!! He restores the years the locust has eaten. He renews, He restores, He revives! The bottom line? [It is!] – “Come to Jesus.” Bow the knee!
Do it! Do it now. ~ Pray without ceasing ~ And then? – “Rejoice evermore.”
“We cook our spirituality on medium.”
Not me so much. I alternated between “Crack Pot” and “Crock Pot”spirituality. But Yah in His chesed has said “enough” and has turned up the heat and I’m beginning to boil. The heat is burning away the dross, consuming the fat and for the first time on my life I am not afraid of the heat because I know the One who is fanning the flame and controlling the thermostat. On the other hand- this heat is internal, like being cooked in a microwave. I’m not sure I would do well in a physical flame. But those days aren’t just coming – they are here. And the Holocaust God will arise and terrify those who worship and imitate a meek and gentle lamb. RAK CHAZAK! Michael
Yes, love IS terrifying! This is the real reason we run, I think.
Not to trivialize the terror of the Living G-d, but if you want to experience sheer terror just for the taste of it, you could try being the average widow or orphan on this planet for a day. Try needing love from the depths of one of those pits! Yes!
The following story has had to be heavily edited to protect the guilty, but because it was quite helpful to me at a certain point in my own life to put my terror in perspective, I am going to share it.
A certain precious person in my life spent a stint in one of our local Georgia rural jails . While there, a fellow inmate was admitted for the possession of $X00,000.00 in cash in his car. As he could give no explanation for the possession of said cash, he was sentenced to interminable incarceration. As time unfolded, and my precious person had a way of gaining confidence, this story unfolded.
This was back during the _________ administration, where frustration was running rather high over having to follow the laws of the land when it came to righting what was deemed injustice on this planet, so a rash of creative ways around said laws was subsequently invented for the purposes of Doing Something. As an important part of Doing Something had to do with financing, where the major part of the legal headache was originating from, one of the fav ways to create the necessary means was to tap into the lucrative money stream in illegal _____ crossing the border from the South. This particular person said that he was flying private planes across the border and running back with loads of, well, the way to come up with cash, at which point the injustice righting could commence.
What injustice? Well, it seemed that there was a lucrative business in the export of small children to a certain small island in ______ where they were being expended for snuff porn, and as our hands were tied in every way, the only way to get close to the situation was to pose as a buyer for some of these children, so as to keep some of them out of this situation. This person was one of those buyers.
He was in a bind. IF he confessed, the operation was compromised, and not only could there be no more children redeemed, people within the chain of operation could be in danger. Everybody knows that there is no true safety in the law for things at this level. So, he stayed quiet. My person asked him what hope he had. “Well”, he said, “if the current president gets re-elected, he will issue a presidential pardon for me.” “How do you know that?” my person asked. Well, it turned out that this person had the capacity to send and receive calls from the prison pay phone on the wall of the jail without it ringing or going through the switch board. My person watched him do it. He would just go stand next to the phone and pick it up. It would never ring. “What will you do if the president is not re-elected?” my person asked. “How do you sleep?” Whereupon this man turned to him with all the weariness of the world in his face and said softly, “I don’t sleep, anyway.” The president was not re-elected. I didn’t sleep for years after when I would think of those children.
I finally broke the silence code I had going with G-d at the time; one of the few times I did. I was furious. “How could there be a good reason for such injustice?” I screamed. But what I saw back silenced me. Over time, it dawned on me that the only way we are going to never do evil again is to be thoroughly convinced of its evilness. This can happen through repentance, for sure, as we back out of our messes, but it can also happen, I thought I saw, through other ways of becoming convinced that evil was bad. One of those ways was to experience it; to be on the receiving end of it. That sounds horrible, but I want to ask you, what person on this earth could be more convinced that evil is bad than one of those terrified children? And where did they come from, anyway? Believe it or not, many of them came from crack-addicted moms needing cash for their next fix. What real chance did these children have on this planet? Yes, grace is to be found at the bottom of terror. Rarely is it found at the privileged top. That, I think I do know.
Oh my gosh Laurita! What a sobering story you share.
Yes evil certainly exists and it is to horrible for words many times. I personally have not known a situation such as this but I do have a very active imagination and read many different venues. I have personally experienced demons and know they are real. That is a pretty terrifying event!
I think overall we here in this “nanny state” do not have a clue about being terrified. We tend to hear or see an occasional thing and be upset for a minute and then go on to our dinners. I know I am guilty of this.
I am actively waking my conscience up so these things do stir me up. I seek to be intense in my obedience to my God. I don’t want to have a spirituality cooked on medium.
I wonder if that relates to being lukewarm and ending up being spit out?
Oh, Dawn, the pendulum does swing. In their prosperity Israel forgot their Maker, and in adversity they remembered Him. So do we, I think. We have prospered, and forgotten. The poor we have with us, so we can remember. But how many of us step out of the comfort zone to do our full duty by them? To love is to become willing to vest ourselves in the risk, because to love on this planet is to line up with those who need it most, and to do that exposes us to that evil also. I am suspicious that if we are not experiencing the full maelstrom of that evil, we may not have our sails trimmed into its wind. The lack of terror and experience of evil may be because we have lots of justifications to keep ourselves out of Love’s needs. Terror I can self serve easily just by lining up with someone else’s interests who need love most. The binds of the devil are multifarious and wicked beyond description. And, more than likely, they are happening right now to your neighbor and mine. Why wait until the end of the world? Perhaps this is the best chance we have of not getting that end terror? Is this another principle of the Kingdom? Love is always a risk. I think I would rather choose to be terrified of that evil because I chose to face it because that is what Love would do, instead of being terrified of facing Him because I chose not to face it. What if seeking His face is to see it in the teeth of that evil? What if all of us are Tolstoy’s cobbler, looking for the Christ Child so as to give Him our best, but what if this is the way He gave us to give it to Him?
Laurita you said: “Love is always a risk. I think I would rather choose to be terrified of that evil because I chose to face it because that is what Love would do, instead of being terrified of facing Him because I chose not to face it.” That has to be one of the most profound and challenging statements that I have read in a long, long time. Thank you. Now how to do it or deal with it. Yah help me to choose the narrow path of doing chesed and not the well worn, broad road of excusing my self. Michael
Our pastors, generally speaking, have lost their fire and brimstone messages, which while not necessarily of a Hebraic perspective did serve to help their congregations to consider the tenuous nature of their lives. this message by delivered by Johnathan Edwards in 1741 is a good example: Sinners in the Hands Of An Angry God” A friend who has since passed on, lent me a copy years ago. It got me to thinking about the verse “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” and then questioning what kind of fear I should have. Too often I have been counseled that “fear” in this context is reverent awe, not unlike watching fire works. I believe that is too weak an explanation. I believe that one should have terrifying fear which spurns obedience to the one who has complete control over ones life. It is also far too easy in the world we live in to slip into disobedience for convenience sake. Sins I struggle with all of the time.
“These days we expect to be plied with medications so that even the most excruciatingly painful illnesses are made tolerable.” Thank ABBA for that.
Yet, from the beginning, it was not so, pain and emotions are means of protecting us, of alerting us of malfunctions and problematic issues in our physical/spiritual health system, that needed correction.
This too should be so terrifying, “natural and man-made destruction.” That is, a simple case of a person too numbed to fear, emotions and pain, being alone without anyone to truly confide to, harassed, threatened, incapable of facing/confronting the situation, creating a personality that could not rightly express themselves, nor function fully! That is evil too. But, “life ‘continues'”? This should be terrifying -man-made destruction, to fall into the hands of the living God!
We must never allow fear to terrorize us.
Dualism. The philosophy of separateness, opposites, the idea that mind and spirit are not required to interact, that in order to know good, evil must exist. Reverence and awe vs. terror. Are they separate, different, or is that something we have invented in our western Greek mindsets? Is YHVH the God of love and mercy or is He the God of justice and retribution or is He all of the above and we cannot comprehend without making Him pieces parts?
Is it terror to suffer for doing right or does the terror come when we suffer for doing wrong? Obedience assures us of the blessing of YHVH, but what does that look like? The process of sanctification is all about reintegrating our bodies, minds, and spirits so that we function as an echad, a one, instead of three separate entities. Continuing to give spiritual assent with the mind and not do it with the body, is willful sin.
Hebrews 10 context: 26 For while we are willfully sinning after the receiving the knowledge of the truth, sacrifice no longer remains for sins, 27 but some fearful expectation (terror?) of judgment and a zeal of fire going to consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone having set-aside the Law of Moses dies without compassions upon the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 For how much worse punishment do you think he will be considered-worthy— the one having trampled-underfoot the Son of God, and having regarded as defiled the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and having insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know the One having said [in Deut 32:35]: “Vengeance is for Me, I will repay”; and again [in Deut 32:36]: “The Lord will judge His people”. 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
32 Now remember the former days during which, having been enlightened, you endured a great struggle of sufferings— 33 on this hand being made-a-spectacle by both reproaches and afflictions, and on this hand having become partners of the ones living in this manner. 34 For indeed you sympathized-with the prisoners, and you accepted with joy the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you-yourselves have a better and abiding possession. 35 So do not throw-away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, in order that having done the will of God, you might receive the promise. 37 For yet in a very little while, “the One coming will come and will not delay. 38 But My righteous one will live by faith. And if he draws-back, My soul is not well-pleased with him” [Hab 2:3-4]. 39 But we are not of a drawing-back resulting-in destruction, but of a faith resulting in the preserving of the soul.
Do I hear an AMEN??
And this person said, “Amen”.