The Morgue
For behold, YHWH will go froth from His place, to punish the iniquity of the inhabitants of the earth, and the earth shall disclose the blood shed upon her, and shall no longer cover up her slain. Isaiah 26:21
Cover Up – It will be a day of terrible consequence. It will be a day of monstrous revelations. It will be a day soaked in blood. The day that God uncovers all the ones slain because of unholiness on the earth.
A brief summary may be in order. Between 1490 and 1890, conquerors in the Americas exterminated as many as 10 million natives. The mass extermination of the American Indians ranks among the world’s greatest genocides. South American exterminations may have been worse. The French Revolution killed perhaps as many as 400,000 people. The Philippine-American War (1899-1902) slaughtered between 200,000 to 600,000 Filipinos. The Germans exterminated 80 percent of the Herero population in Southwest Africa between 1902 and 1907. The Russian Tsars killed at least 400,000 Circassians. Chinese dynasties were responsible for more than 500,000 deaths before 1911. The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) slaughtered as many as 2 million Armenians, 750,000 Assyrians and 70,000 Kurds. The Soviet Union slaughtered probably as many as 10 million, not including another 6 to 10 million who died from the results of terror campaigns. We think of Hitler’s extermination of 7 million Jews, but Nazi Germany killed another 10 million Slavs, Romanians, mentally ill and “sexual deviants.” Muslims in India killed as many as 1 million Sikhs and Hindus after Britain left. The French killed at least 1.5 million in Algeria. The Bangladesh War of 1971 slaughtered at least 1.5 million. Rwanda counts 800,000 dead. Pol Pot adds another 1.7 million. The list goes on, even today. Can anyone doubt that Man is worse than an animal?
As unsettling as these grim statistics are, they do not compare with the 50 million infants killed before birth in the United States alone. Now whose streets will be covered in blood, whose hand will drip from the sacrifices to convenience? The news carries headlines of 5,661 U S soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but every day 115,000 abortions terminate the lives of the innocent. 42 million a year around the world. Where are the priorities? What does this say about the value of life in this world? Who do you think God will vindicate?
Isaiah tells us that one day all will be revealed. God will remove the false shield we have used to cover up our atrocities. No kasah. No concealing, no covering. How many of the slain will rise to accuse their oppressors, their murders? It is a day so tormenting to even imagine that one would believe it to be a nightmare. But life on this earth is the nightmare, as we shall see when God wakes the dead.
Awash in blood, what shall we do? Yes, what shall we do to stem the tide before that terrible day when the earth in uncovered?
“This is what the prophets discovered. History is a nightmare. There are more scandals, more acts of corruption, than are dreamed of in philosophy. It would be blasphemous to believe that what we witness is the end of God’s creation. It is an act of evil to accept the state of evil as either inevitable or final. Others may be satisfied with improvement, the prophets insist on redemption. The way of man is a disgrace, and it must not go on forever.”[1]
Topical Index: cover up, kasah, conceal, genocide, abortion, Isaiah 26:21
[1] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, Vol. 1, p. 181.
Harsh words and little room for hope. The problem is that I am to be a recipient of the judgement because for years I have supported such behavior as abortion. I will not go into my reasons here for it is much too private. The judgement will be on me and I will have no excuse that is acceptable.
Roy
There is a murderer in the Old Testament who had room for hope. His name? David.
There is a murderer in the New Testament who had room for hope. His name? Sha’ul.
There are many who sat on the sidelines of abortion or practiced it in the past century, both with birth control methods and surgical procedures, but there is room for hope. Their names? Most of us!
If there is no place for hope . . . Skip ought to shut down this blog.
And the rest of us should give up praying to YHWH.
1. There is a murderer in the New Testament who had room for hope. His name? Sha’ul.
2. There is a murderer in the Old Testament who had room for hope. His name? David.
3. There are many who sat on the sidelines of abortion or practiced it in the past century.
Hi Ian,
I think you raise an interesting issue by comparing the three sins/”crimes.”
In my view, Paul’s sin was far greater than David’s sin or the sin of those who sat on the sidelines of abortion or practiced it in the past century.
Paul was a wretched man in the worst sense, for participating in the murder of multiple innocent people for religious reasons.
David sent Bathsheba’s husband into battle, where the husband was killed along with his comrades. David’s motive was definitely not a good thing, but it was not murder in a legal sense.
Regarding abortion, I believe in the woman’s right to choose.
Jewish law not only permits, but in some circumstances requires abortion. Where the mother’s life is in jeopardy because of the unborn child, abortion is mandatory.
An unborn child has the status of “potential human life” until the majority of the body has emerged from the mother. Potential human life is valuable, and may not be terminated casually, but it does not have as much value as a life in existence.
The Talmud makes no bones about this: it says quite bluntly that if the fetus threatens the life of the mother, you cut it up within her body and remove it limb by limb if necessary, because its life is not as valuable as hers. But once the greater part of the body has emerged, you cannot take its life to save the mother’s, because you cannot choose between one human life and another.
“The Talmud makes no bones about this”
Michael
Is our authority the Torah or the Talmud?
You have some very interesting definitions of when the unborn becomes human enough to be protected by “thou shalt not kill.”
Is this arbitrary conjecture, or do you have some authority to quote on this, preferably YHWH?
Hi Ian,
My opinion begins with “I think you raise an interesting issue…”
And ends with “I believe in the woman’s right to choose.”
The content starting with “Jewish law not only permits…”
Was copied directly from the following url and seems reasonable to me:
http://www.jewfaq.org/sex.htm
Well said Skip. It is said that a society can be judged by how it treats its most weak and vulnerable. By that measure, the clinical extermination of the most vulnerable of all by our thoroughly modern and highly sophisticated medical system, supported by the legal systems of our lands, makes the atrocities of wartimes past pale in comparison.
Thanks for sharing with us in Adelaide – and for speaking up for those with no voice … but whose blood cries out to the creator.
“You are resplendent with light, more majestic than mountains rich with game. Valiant men lie plundered, they sleep their last sleep; not one of the warriors can lift his hands. At your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both horse and chariot lie still. YOU ALONE ARE TO BE FEARED. WHO CAN STAND BEFORE YOU WHEN YOU ARE ANGRY? From heaven you pronounced judgment, and the land feared and was quiet – when you, O God, rose up to judge, to save all the afflicted of the land. Surely your wrath against men brings you praise, and the survivors of your wrath are restrained…” (Psalm 76:4-10)
I have been struck recently by the Holiness of God. Holiness describes all of the attributes of God in their absolute, infinite, permanent perfection. His justice is Holy. His love is Holy…etc. He cannot be perfectly just and not be perfectly love. Both emanate or radiate from His Holiness and we call this “streaming forth” from His Holiness, His glory (as Piper says, when His Holiness goes public). It is only through Jesus that God’s Holiness is accessible, tolerable and enjoyable….But to be confronted with this Holy God, and to feel the weight of His holiness is to recognize not just the past/present atrocities of mankind for which I am complicitous but to recognize my own individual unworthiness and imperfections before a Holy God.
This is why our first cry or appeal before such a Holy and Righteous God is not for grace (God’s favor in what He gives) but rather for mercy (God’s withholding of His love/justice). It seems to me that mercy must always precede favor (I Peter 1:3 – “In His great mercy, He has given us…”). And to be a Holy and Righteous God must also mean that He is sovereign – showing mercy to whom He chooses to show mercy, compassion to those He chooses to show compassion. (Romans 9) But His mercy doesn’t emanate from how He feels about us but rather from the essence of His being – His Holiness demands it. This is both frightening and comforting at the same time and such a confrontation with such a Holy God demands such a response.
When I consider back to Moses’ request in Exodus that God show Him His glory (Ex 33:18), the LORD protected Moses from the intolerable nature of His Holy presence. The LORD’s glory would pass by but the LORD Himself would protect Moses from the LORD’s own glory by putting Moses in the cleft of a rock and covering Moses with the LORD’s own hand. Because the Lord’s radiance (glory) of His Holiness was simply too much for Moses to tolerate and still live, the LORD would permit Moses to see the LORD’s back side but only after the LORD had passed by and only after the LORD had removed His hand….And what was the LORD’s glory that would pass by? Would it be His justice? Would it be His wrath? Scripture tells us it was ALL of God’s “goodness” (Ex 33:19) and the proclamation of His Name (“Yahweh” – the I Am).
It is then that we learn that the Presence and Glory of the Holy Essence of the LORD which was requested by Moses and agreed to with merciful conditions by the LORD, was based upon the LORD’s mercy and compassion (“I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” – Ex 33:19).
Our only appeal as individuals before a Holy God is a cry for the LORD’s mercy and compassion. Our only appeal as partakers in the human race before a Holy God is a cry for the Lord’s mercy and compassion. Individual and national “atrocities” are the results of the creature wanting to live life apart from being confronted with the Holiness of God. But aren’t we glad that the LORD is not like us. His Holiness radiates a glory that emanates not from the requirement that He judge “man’s ways” and man’s atrocities (though this is true) but rather, His judgement is necessitated by His Holy perfections and ALL of HIS GOODNESS.
Finally, aren’t we infinitely and gloriously grateful for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ – God in flesh! It is only in and because of Christ that we are protected from the LORD’s righteous judgment and wrath (Romans 5:9-10). I join with Paul in saying: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25)
“Can anyone doubt that Man is worse than an animal?”
Skip
Your question implies animals sin. Not sure they have an animal Torah by which to measure behavior.
But . . . are you hinting at the idea of the depravity of mankind in his unredeemed condition? Perhaps you have highlighted some of the evidence for a very misunderstood terminology, but I’ll use it anyway . . . “total depravity.”
Yes, you’re right. The expression is simply a reminder that the Bible uses the idea of animal behavior to describe those whose depravity prevents us from recognizing them as human. Probably we shouldn’t suggest that they are “animal” in the biblical sense, but they certainly aren’t “human” in the biblical sense either.